ROBERT SPANO, Music Director
The Robert Reid Topping Chair

The new Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Spano this season conducts and is piano soloist in September's Inaugural Concert, leads ten weekends of Masterworks concerts, and joins the orchestra for a variety of other musical and outreach activities. His first recording with the ASO, of Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade and Russian Easter Overture, was released by Telarc in June.

Mr. Spano is recognized internationally as one of America's outstanding conductors, acclaimed for leading vital, musically distinguished performances as well as for the breadth of repertoire he explores and his consistently imaginative programming. He has conducted nearly every major North American orchestra, including the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, National Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Toronto Symphony, as well as the Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and Santa Fe Opera. He has also appeared with orchestras and opera companies throughout Europe and Asia, notably the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala (Milan), Frankfurt Radio Symphonic Orchestra, Residentie Orchestra of the Hague, Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), New Japan Philharmonic (Tokyo), Royal Opera at Covent Garden (London), and Welsh National Opera. As Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra since 1996, he has brought the orchestra to serious international attention.

This season, besides his Atlanta and Brooklyn concerts, Mr. Spano will conduct the Boston Symphony, Houston Symphony, Tapiola Sinfonietta in Finland, and orchestra of the Curtis Institute. He will also conduct Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at the Houston Grand Opera.

In addition to his demanding performance schedule, Mr. Spano remains strongly committed to music education. In 1998 he became director of the prestigious conducting fellowship program at the Tanglewood Music Center. He has taught at Bowling Green University and is Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. An accomplished pianist, he performs chamber music with many of his colleagues from the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and Oberlin Conservatory. He will give a Spivey Hall recital next March with the ASO's Cecylia Arzewski.

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