Dr. Peter Lemonds joins the Georgia Youth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus program as Music Director of Philharmonia. Dr. Lemonds is currently Co-Director of Orchestras at Duluth High School where he has served as chairman of the Fine Arts Department. In addition, he has served as the Georgia Music Educator's District 13 Orchestra chairman and is currently high school lead teacher for Orchestra programs in the Gwinnett County Public Schools.

He has had a varied career as a performing cellist, conductor, and educator, performing numerous concerts as a soloist and chamber musician in the United States, England, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico and Korea. He was an assistant professor of music at the University of Southern Mississippi, and served on the faculty of the Sewanee Summer Music Center. He has directed the orchestra program for the Georgia Governor's Honors Program and has taught at the Paideia School (as founder and director of the orchestra program), the Lovett School, Wheeler High School, East Cobb Middle School, North Gwinnett High School and Duluth Middle School.

He was a finalist in the Dealy Awards Competition and a winner of the Alpha Delta Kappa International Cello Competition. Dr. Lemonds has performed with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Atlanta Opera, and has appeared with numerous guest artists, including Sarah Brightman, Smokey Robinson, Rod Stewart, Al Jarreau, Bob Hope, Bernadetter Peters, Page and Plant of Led Zeppelin, and Dionne Warwick. He has recorded "Georgia On My Mind" with Ray Charles for Georgia Public Television.

He holds a Master of Music degree from Louisiana State University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of the South, Sewanee. He received a Ford Foundation Fellowship for doctoral study at the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri, where he completed his dissertation, The Carl Flesch Violin Scale System: An Edition for Cello, and was awarded the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. Dr. Lemonds is a member of the Georgia Music Educators Association, American String Teachers Association, American Federation of Musicians, National School Orchestra Association, and Georgia Association of Educators. His orchestras have been selected three times to perform at the Georgia Music Educators Convention in Savannah, Georgia, and twice at the National Orchestra Festival.

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