Christopher Rountree

Artistic Director and Conductor

28 year old conductor Christopher Rountree founded wild Up in 2010. He first fell in love with music playing bass in a garage band, trombone in a brass band, and watching the Berlin Philharmonic play Brahms and Bartok.

Rountree has conducted orchestras around the U.S. and Europe, including the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonie in the Czech Republic, the Medomak Festival Orchestra in Maine and the Rose City Chamber Orchestra in Portland, Oregon. Before bringing wild Up together, Christopher was Music Director of the Michigan Pops Orchestra and student of the renowned conducting professor Kenneth Kiesler, at the University of Michigan.

At age 22, he was appointed principal conductor of La Primavera Youth Orchestra in Orange County while studying conducting with Joana Carneiro, then-assistant conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic.

Rountree is a seventh-generation Californian. He is a cyclist, unpaid psychoanalyst, cutter of vegetables, storyteller, burrito enthusiast, poet, composer, teacher, and creator of mostly sound-related joy pockets.

“Christopher Rountree, wild Up’s 27 year old Artistic Director conducted with infectious enthusiasm...it was magnificent.”  
- Mark Swed, The Los Angeles Times 

"Rountree punches out rhythms as if they were going out of style. He emphasizes outsize emotions. He could probably get an audience to dance to the slowest movement Shostakovich ever wrote.”
-Mark Swed, The Los Angeles Times