 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. |
