 Rob
Fisher Rob
Fisher has been music director and conductor of the Tony Award-winning
Encores! series at New York’s City Center since its
inception in 1994. In 1997 he was presented the Lucille Lortel
Award for Outstanding Special Achievement for his work on
Encores! The series has spawned many recordings for which
he has served as the conductor and associate producer.
The current Broadway
hits Chicago and Wonderful Town began at the Encores! series.
Mr. Fisher was instrumental in their successful transfers
and remains supervising music director of both Broadway companies,
as well as the international and touring companies of Chicago.
He conducted the Grammy-winning 1997 Chicago cast recording
released on RCA Victor.
Mr. Fisher was
the music director for the New York premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s
Saturday Night in February of 2000. In 2001, he conducted
Sweeney Todd with Patti LuPone, George Hearn and the San Francisco
Symphony, broadcast on PBS and available on DVD.
Twice in 1998 Mr.
Fisher performed on the PBS series, In Performance at the
White House for President and Mrs. Clinton and their guests
in the East Room. Fisher was also the music director for the
recent Great Performances documentary, The Rodgers and Hart
Story: Thou Swell, Thou Witty. For the 2000 Kennedy Center
honors, he created the musical tribute to Angela Lansbury.
Mr. Fisher recently
made his Minnesota Opera debut conducting Street Scene, having
previously conducted Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera on
Broadway starring Sting, Happy End for Arena Stage and PBS,
and Lady in the Dark and One Touch of Venus for the Encores!
series in New York, all using Weill’s original orchestrations.
For four seasons
he was music director for Garrison Keillor's American Radio
Company. The broadcasts specialized in all kinds of American
music and featured everything from Verdi and Tchaikovsky to
Bernstein and Gershwin to Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton.
With the Coffee Club Orchestra from the radio show Fisher
recorded Shaking the Blues Away, a collection of Depression
era popular music which was released on Angel/EMI.
Mr. Fisher was
the artistic advisor for Carnegie Hall’s two-year Gershwin
Centennial Celebration and was the music director and conductor
for Ira at 100, the gala concert on December 6, 1996, which
was subsequently broadcast on PBS Great Performances. He also
designed the 1997 spring series on Ira Gershwin in Weill Recital
Hall, performing as pianist in Mr. Gershwin Goes to Washington,
and the 1998 season’s George Gershwin series which included
perfroming Gershwin’s duo piano music with Dick Hyman
and concert performances of Tip-Toes, which Fisher restored,
conducted and recorded. In 1996 he served as music director
and conductor of his own restoration of Irving Berlin’s
Louisiana Purchase, which was performed in concert at Weill
Recital Hall and then recorded and released on DRG records.
In the fall of
1995 Mr. Fisher made his New York City Opera debut leading
Cinderella. In December of 1994 Mr. Fisher conducted the New
World Symphony in a program honoring Michael Tilson Thomas
on his 50th birthday. As guest artist he has also led the
San Franciso, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Atlanta, Virginia, Colorado,
Baltimore and National Symphonies, as well as many performances
with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. At the Caramoor Music
Festival he has organized and conducted gala concerts with
Barbara Cook, James Morris, Jerry Hadley, and Maureen McGovern.
As a soloist he has played Rhapsody in Blue many times including
for live television and has performed Concerto in F with orchestras
across the country.
For the concert
versions of the Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing and Let 'Em Eat
Cake, he served as guest conductor for the final six performances
at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Opera House (assuming the
baton from Michael Tilson Thomas on short notice). Mr. Fisher
also conducted the twenty-four performances of these works
at the Kennedy Center Opera House and was associate conductor
for the Grammy-nominated recording on CBS records.
Mr. Fisher has
has contributed his talents to several projects for the Library
of Congress. The first, in 1989, celebrated the inauguration
of the Leonore Gershwin/Library of Congress Recording and
Publishing Project. This two evening event with full orchestra
and soloists was the first hearing in sixty years of recently
discovered Gershwin manuscripts that had been presumed lost.
In February of 1994, Mr. Fisher was music director and conductor
of a gala concert for the Library at the historic Warner Theater
in Washington, D.C. It was an evening entirely of Irving Berlin’s
songs featuring the Coffee Club Orchestra and distinguished
soloists performing materials from the recently acquired 750,000
item Berlin archive. In the spring of 1998 he was a moderator
and performer at he Library of Congress Gershwin Centenary
Symposium. He also served as music director for concert productions
of Gershwin's Lady, Be Good!, Strike Up the Band, Girl Crazy,
and Delicious for the Smithsonian Institution.
A Norfolk, Virginia
native, he holds degrees from Duke University and the American
University where his teachers were Evelyn Swarthout, Betty
Bullock, and Jerzy Sapieyevski. |
