William Reber is Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Lyric Opera Theatre and Professor of Music in the Herberger College of the Art at Arizona State University. He joined the ASU faculty in 1991 and has served as Director of the Opera and Musical Theatre training programs since that date. A native of Oakland, CA, he has been Conductor of the Corpus Christi Ballet (TX) since 1986. From 1993 through 2004, he was head of the vocal coaching program for AIMS (American Institute of Musical Studies), in Graz, Austria. In addition to conducting symphony and chamber orchestra concerts in the United States and Europe, he has served as Music Director/Conductor for more than 125 productions of operas, musicals and ballets.

Former Music Director of the Minnesota Opera Studio and conductor for the Minnesota Opera, he also served as conductor and vocal coach for the Altenburger Musiktheater Akademie in Altenburg, Germany. He was Music Advisor to the StaatsOperette Dresden, Assistant Conductor for Arizona Opera's two productions of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, and a member of the music staff for the Minnesota Dance Theatre. Dr. Reber also served as Music Director for both the Symphony Orchestra and Opera Theatre at California State University, Fullerton, and was a member of the conducting faculty of The University of Texas at Austin where he founded the Chamber Orchestra and conducted productions of the Opera Theatre.

As a recital accompanist, he has performed with singers and instrumentalists in Germany, Austria, Macedonia and throughout the United States. A frequent lecturer on opera and symphonic repertory, he has presented lectures to audiences and classes in Macedonia, Austria, Germany and several U.S. cities. For Arizona Opera, he created and presented introductory lectures for more than twenty different productions and well as a series of special topic lectures for their two productions of Wagner’s Ring.

Dr. Reber earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Opera and Conducting at The University of Texas at Austin, where he studied under Walter Ducloux who was a student of Felix Weingartner and Josef Krips at the Vienna Academy (now known as the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien).