Robert Spano is recognized as one of the brightest and most imaginative conductors of his generation. In ten seasons as music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra he has enriched and expanded its repertoire and elevated the ensemble to new levels of international prominence and acclaim. Appointed Music Director-Designate of the Aspen Music Festival and School in March 2011, Mr. Spano assumes the title of Music Director in 2012. At the same time, Mr. Spano was named a Fellow of the prestigious Aspen Institute as part of its 2011 Harman-Eisner Artist in Residence Program.
Spano has conducted the greatest orchestras of North America, including those in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Abroad, he has led the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala (Milan), Czech Philharmonic, Berlin Radio Sinfonie Orchestra, the BBC Scottish and BBC Symphony Orchestras, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic and the Oslo Philharmonic, among others ... read full bio
Robert Spano is recognized as one of the brightest and most imaginative conductors of his generation. In ten seasons as music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra he has enriched and expanded its repertoire and elevated the ensemble to new levels of international prominence and acclaim. Appointed Music Director-Designate of the Aspen Music Festival and School in March 2011, Mr. Spano assumes the title of Music Director in 2012. At the same time, Mr. Spano was named a Fellow of the prestigious Aspen Institute as part of its 2011 Harman-Eisner Artist in Residence Program.
Spano has conducted the greatest orchestras of North America, including those in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Abroad, he has led the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala (Milan), Czech Philharmonic, Berlin Radio Sinfonie Orchestra, the BBC Scottish and BBC Symphony Orchestras, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic and the Oslo Philharmonic, among others.
Equally accomplished as an operatic conductor, he has appeared with the opera companies of Chicago, Houston and Cincinnati as well as at the Santa Fe Opera, Royal Opera at Covent Garden and the Welsh National Opera. In 2005 and 2009, he conducted internationally renowned casts in a total of six acclaimed cycles of Wagner’s monumental Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Seattle Opera.
Highlights of Spano’s 2011-2012 season include appearances with the Seattle Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Deutches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Juilliard Orchestra. A respected pianist and composer, Spano also collaborates this season with bass-baritone Eric Owens in three recitals, including a performance in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. An educator who finds inspiration through his work with young musicians, Maestro Spano leads the Juilliard Symphony Orchestra and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, both in Philadelphia and in residence at the Dresden Music Festival. Spring 2012 marks the third (and final) year of Spano’s three-year residency at Emory University, a testament to Spano’s passion for ideas, his ability to communicate them articulately and powerfully, and his commitment to education. Emory University has honored only seven other individuals with such expansive residencies, including the Dalai Lama, President Jimmy Carter and author Salman Rushdie.
Highlights of Spano’s eleventh season as music director in Atlanta include selections from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra premiere of Mahler’s arrangement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and the U.S. premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Nyx in Atlanta and at Carnegie Hall, marking Spano’s sixth appearance there with the ASO. Mr. Spano also conducts three world premieres in Atlanta during the 2011-2012 season and leads performances of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and John Adams’ A Flowering Tree. Since his arrival at the ASO, the orchestra has reported an increase in single ticket and subscription sales, and the number of donors has risen by more than 40 percent.
With an extensive discography of critically acclaimed recordings for Telarc and Deutsche Grammophon, Spano has garnered six Grammy Awards with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In February 2011 the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the recording company Naxos formed the ASO Media label. The highly praised inaugural recording featured new works by Atlanta School of Composers members Jennifer Higdon and Michael Gandolfi. The second recording on the new label, released four months later, was of an ASO-commissioned work of Christopher Theofanidis’s and Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs with mezzo-soprano Kelly O’Connor. Spano is also featured on Deutsche Grammophon’s March 2010 DVD release of Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos, conducting a live version of the work at the Holland Festival. Other recent recordings include John Adams’ Transmigration of Souls, Gandolfi’s The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Brahms’s Requiem, a live concert recording of Puccini’s La Bohème, and Golijov’s Oceana and Ainadamar (Grammy© winner for Best Opera Recording and Best Contemporary Classical Composition).
Spano 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 Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic—a period marked by significant artistic growth, thematic programming, and wide critical acclaim. During his eight-year tenure he brought the ensemble to international attention through a number of adventurous projects that included Thomas Adès’ Powder Her Face, John Adams’ Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, world premieres by Michael Hersch, Bright Sheng, Philip Glass and Christopher Theofanidis, and more than 40 New York premieres.
Before assuming his new post at the Aspen Music Festival and School, Spano-- a professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music--ran the Conducting Fellowship Program at the Tanglewood Music Center from 1998 to 2002. He was music director of the 2006 Ojai Festival and often conducts the Curtis Symphony Orchestra and the Juilliard Orchestra. He has received honorary doctorates from Bowling Green State University, the Curtis Institute of Music, Emory University and, most recently, Oberlin. In May 2009 Spano was awarded Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor's Award for the advancement of American music.
An accomplished pianist, Spano performs chamber music with many of his colleagues from the Atlanta Symphony, Boston Symphony and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Born in 1961 in Conneaut, Ohio, and raised in Elkhart, Indiana, he grew up in a musical family, composing and playing flute, violin and piano. He graduated from Oberlin, where he studied conducting with Robert Baustian, and went on to work at the Curtis Institute of Music with the late Max Rudolf. In 2004 at the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Spano performed under water, a work for solo piano he composed based on Debussy’s Engulfed Cathedral. He 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.” Spano was named Musical America’s 2008 Conductor of the Year. He makes his home in Atlanta.
Last updated October 2011. Contact Opus 3 Artists for the most up-to-date version.
