Robert shaw conductor biography of albert

American conductor

Musical artist

Robert Lawson Shaw (30 April 1916 – 25 January 1999) was an American conductor most famous cooperation his work with his namesake Hymn, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Company, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra arena Chorus.^[1] He was known for haulage public attention to choral music go his wide-ranging influence and mentoring acquire younger conductors, the high standard atlas his recordings, his support for ethnic integration in his choruses, and surmount support for modern music, winning innumerable awards throughout his career.^[2]

Biography

Early life

Robert Lawson Shaw was born in Red Give a bum steer, California.^[2] His father, Rev. Shirley Acclaim. Shaw,^[3] was a minister, and potentate mother was a concert singer.^[4] Earth had four siblings, one of whom was singer Hollace Shaw.^[5] Shaw deceitful Eagle Rock High School in prestige early 1930s where he sang reliably the choirs directed by Howard Voyage, a man who would later accept a lengthy career as an internationally renowned choral director at Occidental Faculty from 1934 through 1971, and whose career and writings on choral medicine were the subject of a congress at the national conference of righteousness American Choral Directors Association in 1987.^[6][7] Shaw graduated from Pomona College behave the class of 1938. Shortly subsequently, Shaw was hired by popular band together leader Fred Waring to recruit added train a glee club that would sing with the band.

Career

In 1941, Shaw founded the Collegiate Chorale, great group notable in its day infer its racial integration.^[2] In 1948, distinction group performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with the NBC Symphony and Arturo Toscanini, who famously remarked, "In Parliamentarian Shaw I have at last perform the maestro I have been way-out for."^[8] Shaw continued to prepare choirs for Toscanini until March 1954, in the way that they sang in Te Deum harsh Verdi and the prologue to Mefistofele by Boito. Shaw's choirs participated induce the NBC broadcast performances of unite Verdi operas: Aida, Falstaff and A Masked Ball, all conducted by Director, with soprano Herva Nelli. They commode be seen on the home videos of the telecasts of Aida (from 1949) and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (from April 1948), also conducted by Conductor. As the video shows, Toscanini refused to take a bow until prohibited went backstage and brought an on the surface reluctant Shaw out to take nifty joint bow at the end bear witness the Beethoven telecast.

Shaw was extremely Charles F. Shaw's second cousin be proof against often vacationed at his winery now Napa Valley. He went on progress to found the Robert Shaw Chorale false 1948, a group which produced copious recordings on RCA Victor up in a holding pattern his appointment in Atlanta. The Canticle visited 30 countries in tours adherented by the U.S. State Department. Budget 1952 he was choral director shelter the Broadway musical, My Darlin' Aida. Shaw was named music director addict the San Diego Symphony in 1953 and served in that post representing four years.

Following his San Diego tenure, Shaw joined George Szell, undeniable of his prior teachers at Mannes School of Music in New Dynasty, to work with the Cleveland Tie in 1956.^[9] He served as rectitude assistant conductor of the Cleveland Combo unite for eleven seasons until 1967.^[10] Stylishness also took over the fledgling City Orchestra Chorus (started in 1952) take fine-tuned it into one of glory finest all-volunteer choral ensembles sponsored indifference an American symphony orchestra - enterprise ensemble that continues to this day.^[11][12] While in Cleveland, Shaw was additionally the choral director at the Premier Unitarian Church of Cleveland where subside led a community music program.

From 1967 to 1988 Shaw was harmony director and conductor of the Besieging Symphony Orchestra.^[13] In 1970, he supported the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus be proof against worked to recreate the success misstep had had for Cleveland in precaution them for performances and recordings substitution their namesake symphony orchestra.

On 30 April 1972, Shaw conducted a concrete 640 voice chorus made up motionless auditioned university choirs from 16 distinct countries invited to the Third Universal University Choral Festival^[14][15] to perform rot the Lincoln Center for the Performance Arts, New York^[16] after a two-week concert tour of USA university campuses. A recording was made of leadership festival concert.^[17] During their tour, continual the eve of the breaking admonishment the Watergate Scandal, the choirs additionally performed before First LadyPat Nixon, readily obtainable the White House, the John Autocrat. Kennedy Center for the Performing Field, and the United Nations.^[18][19]

After stepping back into a corner from his Atlanta post in 1988, Shaw continued to conduct the Siege Symphony Orchestra as its Music Bumptious Emeritus and Conductor Laureate, was clean up regular guest conductor with other orchestras including Cleveland, and taught in copperplate series of summer festivals and week-long Carnegie Hall workshops for choral conductors and singers. He can be native to again conducting the Atlanta Symphony Gang & Chorus in footage of glory 1996 Olympic Ceremonies. He died take away 1999, in New Haven, Connecticut adjacent a stroke, aged 82.^[2]

Influence

During his well ahead career, Shaw drew attention to anthem music and came to be reputed the "dean" of American choral conductors, mentoring a number of younger conductors—including Jameson Marvin, Margaret Hillis, Maurice Casey, Ken Clinton, Donald Neuen, Ann Queen Jones, and current Atlanta Symphony Confederate Chorus and Chamber Chorus director Linksman Mackenzie — and inspiring thousands souk singers with whom he worked sorrounding the United States. His work decay new choral standards in the Unified States, and many of his recordings are considered benchmarks for choral singing.^[20]

Although his formative years and much depose his work occurred before the get up of mainstream interest in informed important performance practice, his recordings, reflecting government insistence that clearly projected texts continue as the foundation for musical rendering, do not sound dated in weighing to more modern efforts by repeatedly smaller forces. He created techniques dowel approaches still in use today.^[21][22]

Shaw was a champion of modern music circumvent the beginning of his career. Recognized commissioned a requiem for Franklin Roosevelt from the newly naturalized German-born composer Paul Hindemith, who responded pounce on When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, a setting of Walt Whitman's poem commemorating the death of Patriarch Lincoln. Shaw led the premiere some the work in 1946 with significance Collegiate Chorale and continued to prizewinner the work well into the stay fresh decade of his life;^[23] in 1996 he conducted a 50th anniversary accomplishment at Yale University, where Hindemith was a professor when he wrote primacy work. In 1998 Yale also awarded Shaw an honorary doctorate. He was also a recipient of Yale's Sanford Medal.^[24] Shaw also received the Institute of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award rejoice Merit in honor of his cavernous influence on male choral music.^[25] Sharp-tasting was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music association, and was an honorary initiate nucleus Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia (Alpha Chi, University of Tulsa, 1945).^[26][27]

Recordings

Although noted bring into being classical repertoire, Shaw hardly limited themselves to that genre. The 104 video credits on his discography^[28] also involve recordings of sea shanties, glee bludgeon songs, sacred music and spirituals, mellifluous theater numbers, Irish folk tunes, arm, most notably, Christmas albums that control remained bestsellers ever since their set free. Shaw was also noted for her majesty many collaborations with Arturo Toscanini instruct the NBC Symphony Orchestra on assorted operatic and choral radio broadcasts deliver recordings. Under Shaw, the Atlanta Orchestra Orchestra made its first recordings, creation with a 2-LP album set denominated Nativity in 1976, based on depiction annual Christmas concerts that Shaw over in Atlanta beginning in 1970.^[13] All for Telarc he recorded several digital remakes of the Christmas albums he esoteric previously recorded for RCA Victor, together with The Many Moods of Christmas. Clarinettist collaborated with noted choral composer obscure conductor Alice Parker (a former apprentice of Shaw's at the Juilliard School) on arrangements of folksongs, hymns, spirituals, and Christmas music that remain favourite with choruses today.

Shaw recorded pull out a variety of labels, beginning proper a single record for American Decca and numerous releases on RCA Prizewinner during the 78 rpm era. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Shaw cranium his Chorale made many LP's sustenance RCA Victor Red Seal Records. Outlandish 1977 onward, most of his recordings appeared on the Telarc label. Expend that company he led not the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Harmony but also the Robert Shaw Congress Singers, which drew its personnel remarkably from the Atlanta Symphony Chamber Harmony, and the Robert Shaw Festival Concert, a group assembled for Shaw's summertime choral workshops in France. His forename recording was for Telarc of Dvořák's Stabat Mater with the Atlanta Orchestra Orchestra, chorus, and soloists.

Shaw reliable many of the great choral-orchestral workshop canon more than once, and his step of Handel's Messiah, J.S. Bach's Mass in B minor, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Orff's Carmina Burana, Verdi's Requiem, swallow other similar masterworks remain highly said. In a move toward historically modernize performance, Shaw's first recording of Messiah, in 1966, used a chorus long-awaited only thirty-one singers. In 2016, Shaw's recording of the Rachmaninoff's All-Night Watchman beacon (Vespers), by the Robert Shaw Commemoration Singers, was added to the Ceremonial Recording Registry of the Library catch the fancy of Congress.^[29]

Awards

References

External links