Veteran musician and educator Walter Bitner has enjoyed a diverse career in both educational and performing arts institutions. He is a multi-instrumentalist and singer, teacher, arranger/composer, and conductor, and has performed and studied a wide variety of music from nearly all periods of the Western art music tradition, rock, and jazz on piano, harpsichord, lute, recorder, and voice.

From 1991-2014 Walter taught in public and private schools in New York, Florida, and Nashville – from Kindergarten through 12th grade – in a broad array of music education formats including general music, choir, strings, piano, and music theory. He taught at alternative and progressive schools, traditional college preparatory schools, and a public arts magnet high school. He is Conductor Emeritus of Music City Youth Orchestra, which he founded and directed from 2007 – 2012.

As an administrator, his career spans ten years and two symphony orchestras: he was Director of Education & Community Engagement for the Nashville Symphony from 2014-2019, where he established the award-winning pathways program Accelerando, designed to prepare gifted young students of diverse backgrounds for pursuing music at the collegiate level and beyond. From 2019-2024 he served as Director/VP of Education & Community Engagement for the Richmond Symphony and established the Richmond Symphony School of Music online in 2020 to preserve the Richmond Symphony’s youth orchestra community through the global pandemic. In 2023 he launched the Richmond Symphony’s Youth Community Strings Program, an El Sistema-inspired community impact program for students from Title I schools now in its second year of operations.

Walter’s work as a music educator has always emphasized building community through music, and he brings to his consulting work a long history of envisioning, developing, and successfully establishing new programs to meet community needs. Since 2016 he has served as an advocate for the development of pathways and equity programs in classical music, sharing from his experience in a variety of formats and encouraging cooperation, mentoring, and advising. He has spoken about music, education, and diversity, equity, and inclusion at regional and national conferences, and written extensively on these topics for national magazines, professional associations, and on his website Off The Podium at walterbitner.com.