Robert Rearden joined the National Symphony Orchestra in 2016. He was previously principal horn of the Florida Orchestra from 2010 to 2016 and was a member of the New World Symphony from 2006 to 2010. Rearden has played guest principal horn with the New York Philharmonic, including the nationally televised reopening of David Geffen Hall, as well as with the San Francisco Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He has performed as an extra musician with the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and since 2004 with the Cleveland Orchestra, where he was also a long-term substitute in 2014. Rearden has also performed with the All-Star Orchestra and with the Mainly Mozart, Britt, Artosphere, Steamboat Springs, and Spoleto USA festival orchestras.

Rearden appeared as a soloist with the National Symphony and conductor Gianandrea Noseda in Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns, alongside his NSO colleagues. While with the Florida Orchestra, he performed Nocturno by Franz Strauss in a transcription for horn and orchestra by Teddy Abrams, conducted by Abrams, and Richard Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 2 with conductor Stuart Malina.

His 2022 recording, Idyll, with Teddy Abrams (available to stream for free at  robertrearden.hearnow.com) was praised by The Horn Call as “one of the most satisfying CDs of horn music ever.”

He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina as a student of Robert Pruzin and earned a Master of Music degree and artist diploma at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Eli Epstein and Richard Solis. He also studied with Julie Landsman and David Wakefield. He was a fellowship recipient at Tanglewood and the Aspen Music Festival.

Rearden was a featured artist at the Southeast Horn Workshop in 2017 and 2023. He is on the faculty of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.