Will Whitehead
GYSO Camerata Director
William R. “Will” Whitehead is an American string music educator, orchestral conductor, and violist based in the Atlanta metropolitan area. He is the Director of Orchestras at Daniell Middle School, conductor of the Florida State University (FSU) Summer Music Camps’ Gold Symphony Orchestra, and newly appointed director of the Georgia Youth Symphony Orchestras’ Camerata Orchestra. He holds the Ph.D. in Music Education and Orchestral Conducting from the FSU College of Music.
An experienced music educator, Dr. Whitehead has directed orchestras at the college, high school, and middle school levels. Dr. Whitehead’s students have successfully auditioned into all-state orchestras, youth orchestras, pre-college programs, and university music programs, pursuing degrees in music performance and music education around the country. His classroom teaching has included collegiate coursework in string methods, applied viola, and conducting, as well as secondary coursework in guitar, basic music theory, and AP Music Theory.
Dr. Whitehead is an accomplished and versatile orchestral conductor. Previous conducting appointments include Associate Conductor of the FSU Philharmonia, Music Director of the FSU Sinfonia, and Assistant Music Director of the Tallahassee Youth Orchestras. Through these roles, he has enjoyed collaborations with artists such as Noël Wan, winner of the Gold Medal in the 12th USA International Harp Competition, and London-based pianist Antonio Oyarzábal, as featured in the top Spanish classical music digital publication Melómano Digital. Under his leadership, the FSU Sinfonia expanded from less than 20 to more than 60 non-major string and wind players from around the FSU campus with increasingly diverse programming spanning the works of Florence Price, Hugo Alfvén, Felix Mendelssohn, and Rebecca Clarke.
Dr. Whitehead also spent several summers as the Assistant Conductor of the Studio Orchestra at FSU, where he recorded original film music and conducted live film music and the music of popular and classic video games. This led to a collaboration with Daniel E. Wakefield to perform his original score to Charlie Chaplin’s silent film, “The Kid”, live with the FSU Philharmonia in 2023. His most recent honor was conducting the world premiere of Piotr Szewczyk’s Alternate Timelines with the 2024 FSU Summer Music Camps’ Gold Symphony Orchestra.
Dr. Whitehead is an active professional and scholar both on and off the podium. He served for four years as a member of the executive board of the Florida Orchestra Association and has presented sessions at both the College Orchestra Directors Association (CODA) National Conference and the American String Teachers Association (ASTA) National Conference. He has publications in the American Suzuki Journal and the newsletter of the Florida ASTA, The String Section. His research interests include conducting perception, string orchestra and non-traditional repertoire, issues concerning collegiate orchestras, and string and conducting pedagogy.
Prior to his doctoral studies, Dr. Whitehead completed Bachelor’s degrees in Viola Performance (B.M.) and Instrumental Music Education (B.M.E.) at the Florida State University. He then completed the Master of Music degree in Music Education at Kent State University. In 2022, he was accepted as a Fellow of the Conductor’s Institute of South Carolina, where he further studied conducting with Donald Portnoy, Kate Tamarkin, Peter Jaffe, and Victoria Bond.
