• Programming
• Leader of the Arts

Robert Spano

December 2005

Conductor and Atlanta Symphony Music Director

Celebrating his fifth season as Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Spano conducts numerous concerts on the ASO’s main Classical Series, performs the annual concert in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., and participates in a variety of other musical and outreach activities.

Robert Spano is recognized internationally as one of the brightest and most imaginative conductors of his generation. He has enriched and expanded the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s repertoire through innovative programming and elevated the Orchestra to new levels of international prominence. Under his direction, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has made a series of critically acclaimed recordings for the Telarc label. Recent achievements include a 2005 Grammy Award (“Best Choral Album”) for Berlioz’s Requiem and two 2003 Grammy Awards (“Best Classical Album” and “Best Choral Album”) for Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony, recorded for Telarc with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

This impressive and growing discography is only one facet of the fertile period of growth, artistic achievement and innovation that has characterized his tenure as Music Director, which began in the fall of 2001. In May 2004, Maestro Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus traveled to Carnegie Hall, where they gave a celebrated performance of Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony and works by Debussy and Knussen; this marked their first appearance in New York and led quickly to an invitation to return there in 2006. A proponent of contemporary works, Mr. Spano has programmed regular performances of 20th and 21st century works, as well as world premieres of ASO-commissioned works.

Mr. Spano has also served as Director of the prestigious Festival of Contemporary Music at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Music Center in 2003 and 2004, and from 1996 to 2004 was the Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, a period marked by significant artistic growth and a critical acclaim.

Robert Spano has conducted nearly every major North American orchestra, including the symphonies of Boston, Chicago, Houston, Montreal, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St. Louis and Toronto, the Cleveland, Minnesota and Philadelphia Orchestras, Washington’s National Symphony and the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics. An equally accomplished operatic conductor, he has appeared with the opera companies of Chicago, Houston, Seattle and Santa Fe. He received rave reviews this past summer for a daring undertaking — his first-time conducting of Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle at the Seattle Opera. The huge demands of that project did not deter him from leading a series of concerts with the renowned soprano, Dawn Upshaw, the orchestra and members of the ASO Chorus in the opera, “Ainadanar,” by Osvaldo Golijov. The Argentinean-born musician is one of today’s most exciting and successful composers, and for an exclusive recording of his complete works with the prestigious Deutsche Gramaphon label, Mr Golijov agreed to the project only if Robert Spano would be the conductor, with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

Despite his demanding performance schedule, Robert Spano remains committed to music education. He was head of the acclaimed Conducting Fellowship Program at the Tanglewood Music Center from 1998-2002, has served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute and Bowling Green State University, and is Associate Professor of Conducting at Oberlin Conservatory. An accomplished pianist, Robert Spano also performs chamber music with many of his colleagues from the Atlanta Symphony, Boston Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic and Oberlin Conservatory. He has appeared with musicians from the ASO at Spivey Hall, Morehouse College, and Georgia State University as part of ASO Connect!, a chamber-music initiative of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Spano, born in Conneaut, Ohio and raised in Elkhart, Indiana, grew up in a musical family, composing and playing flute, violin and piano. He is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied conducting with Robert Baustian, and continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music with the late Max Rudolf. Robert Spano has been featured on CBS’s Late Night with David Letterman, CBS Sunday Morning, A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts and PBS’s City Arts. Mr. Spano makes his home in Atlanta.