Ronald Caltabiano

Arts leader and former composer Ronald Caltabiano is dean of Jordan College of the Arts at Butler University (Indianapolis) and artistic director of Butler ArtsFest.

At Butler, Caltabiano has transformed Jordan College into a nexus of the arts for Central Indiana by creating working relationships with government agencies and gaining the support of private corporations, by partnering with high-profile arts groups while lending support to nascent organizations, and by preparing job-ready students as interns, workers, and knowledgeable arts patrons. Caltabiano also directs the university's Schrott Center for the Arts and partners in overseeing the Butler Arts Center, which includes six professional arts-organizations-in-residence. The five academic areas of Jordan College (art, arts administration, dance, music, and theatre) provide focused programs within a strong liberal arts environment—emphasizing the interrelatedness of the arts and the benefit that comes from mutual understanding across disciplines.

Butler ArtsFest, now in its fourth year, is an 11-day, 50-event multi-arts festival, largely on Butler’s campus. It features world-class artists side by side with Butler faculty and students to create highest-level learning opportunities; chances for Indiana audiences to hear and see artists otherwise unavailable to them; and unique, only-at-ArtsFest productions. The budget has quadrupled from its starting budget of just over $100,000.

Before coming to Butler University, Caltabiano ran the Morrison Artist Series in San Francisco, and was a faculty member and associate dean at San Francisco State University. He also served as executive director of the Earplay new music ensemble.

Caltabiano’s compositional commissions include those from the Emerson String Quartet, the San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Dallas Symphonies, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Fires of London. Other performances have been by the Juilliard and Arditti String Quartets, the BBC Symphony, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, the Scottish National Orchestra, and Melbourne WindPower. He has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. After graduating from The Juilliard School with BM/MM/DMA degrees, Caltabiano worked for Aaron Copland during the last years of that composer’s life.