About the Claremont Symphony Orchestra

Dr. Robert Sage

CSO Music Director

Dr. Robert Sage has been a member of the Claremont Symphony Orchestra for over 40 years, succeeding Jim Fahringer as its Music Director in 2011. Dr. Sage also conducts the Buddha’s Light Youth Symphony Orchestra and has conducted a number of other orchestras in both symphonic and operatic repertoire.

His Doctorate in Piano Performance was taken at the University of Southern California. He was a University Professor of Piano and Music History for over 40 years, while performing throughout the United States and Europe.

Dr. Ruth Charloff

CSO Associate Conductor

Associate Conductor of the Claremont Symphony Orchestra since 2012, Dr. Ruth Charloff directs the Orchestra, Chamber Singers, and Chorale at the University of California, Riverside.

She earned a D.M.A. in Orchestral Conducting from Northwestern University and an M.A. from UC Berkeley. At UC Riverside she has taught conducting, instrumentation, 20th-century music history, and Introduction to Western Music.

Eric Lindholm

Guest Conductor

Pomona College’s Harry S. and Madge Rice Thatcher Professor of Music, Eric Lindholm has conducted orchestra and opera in the United States and abroad. He has appeared with the Festival Strings Lucerne, Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen, State Symphony Orchestra of São Paulo, Bulgarian National Radio Symphony, and orchestras in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the United States.

His repertoire includes Mozart, Ravel, Argento, Arthur Sullivan, and Kurt Weill. He was awarded prizes in the 1993 Besançon conducting competition and the 2007 Mitropoulos composition competition, and his compositions have been performed in Greece and the United States.

A former mathematics child prodigy who studied college calculus at age 10 and college physics at 13, he moved from Princeton physics into music. He holds advanced conducting degrees from Boston University and the Yale School of Music, and was a 1994 Tanglewood conducting fellow.

His cello studies were with Michael Reynolds of the Muir String Quartet, and he performs with the Manzanita Piano Quartet. He is married to violist Kira Blumberg, who is on the faculty of the University of Redlands and Pomona College, performs with the Redlands and Long Beach Symphonies, and is a chamber musician and advocate for new music.