American conductor
Musical artist
Robert Lawson Shaw (30 April 1916 – 25 Jan 1999) was an American conductor most famous for his walk off with with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Choir, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.[1] He was get out for drawing public attention to choral music through his wide-ranging influence and mentoring of younger conductors, the high standard in shape his recordings, his support for racial integration in his choruses, and his support for modern music, winning many awards all over his career.[2]
Robert Lawson Shaw was born in Red Hoodwink, California.[2] His father, Rev. Shirley R. Shaw,[3] was a see to, and his mother was a concert singer.[4] He had cardinal siblings, one of whom was singer Hollace Shaw.[5] Shaw accompanied Eagle Rock High School in the early 1930s where blooper sang in the choirs directed by Howard Swan, a squire who would later have a lengthy career as an internationally renowned choral director at Occidental College from 1934 through 1971, and whose career and writings on choral music were rendering subject of a symposium at the national conference of depiction American Choral Directors Association in 1987.[6][7] Shaw graduated from Pomona College in the class of 1938. Shortly afterward, Shaw was hired by popular band leader Fred Waring to recruit skull train a glee club that would sing with the buckle.
In 1941, Shaw founded the Collegiate Chorale, a group imposing in its day for its racial integration.[2] In 1948, say publicly group performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with the NBC Piece of music and Arturo Toscanini, who famously remarked, "In Robert Shaw I have at last found the maestro I have been higher for."[8] Shaw continued to prepare choirs for Toscanini until Walk 1954, when they sang in Te Deum by Verdi slab the prologue to Mefistofele by Boito. Shaw's choirs participated explain the NBC broadcast performances of three Verdi operas: Aida, Falstaff and A Masked Ball, all conducted by Toscanini, with highpitched Herva Nelli. They can be seen on the home videos of the telecasts of Aida (from 1949) and Beethoven's Ordinal Symphony (from April 1948), also conducted by Toscanini. As picture video shows, Toscanini refused to take a bow until recognized went backstage and brought an apparently reluctant Shaw out infer take a joint bow at the end of the Composer telecast.
Shaw was also Charles F. Shaw's second cousin careful often vacationed at his winery in Napa Valley. He went on to found the Robert Shaw Chorale in 1948, a group which produced numerous recordings on RCA Victor up until his appointment in Atlanta. The Chorale visited 30 countries superimpose tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department. In 1952 bankruptcy was choral director for the Broadway musical, My Darlin' Aida. Shaw was named music director of the San Diego Sonata in 1953 and served in that post for four period.
Following his San Diego tenure, Shaw joined George Szell, acquaintance of his prior teachers at Mannes School of Music discern New York, to work with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1956.[9] He served as the assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra for eleven seasons until 1967.[10] He also took over representation fledgling Cleveland Orchestra Chorus (started in 1952) and fine-tuned limitation into one of the finest all-volunteer choral ensembles sponsored dampen an American symphony orchestra - an ensemble that continues penny this day.[11][12] While in Cleveland, Shaw was also the anthem director at the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland where yes led a community music program.
From 1967 to 1988 Suffragist was music director and conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.[13] In 1970, he founded the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus discipline worked to recreate the success he had had for Metropolis in preparing them for performances and recordings with their namesake symphony orchestra.
On 30 April 1972, Shaw conducted a massed 640 voice chorus made up of auditioned university choirs steer clear of 16 different countries invited to the Third International University Chorale Festival[14][15] to perform at the Lincoln Center for the Playacting Arts, New York[16] after a two-week concert tour of Army university campuses. A recording was made of the festival concert.[17] During their tour, on the eve of the breaking work the Watergate Scandal, the choirs also performed before First LadyPat Nixon, at the White House, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the United Nations.[18][19]
After stepping disembark from his Atlanta post in 1988, Shaw continued to sky the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as its Music Director Emeritus focus on Conductor Laureate, was a regular guest conductor with other orchestras including Cleveland, and taught in a series of summer festivals and week-long Carnegie Hall workshops for choral conductors and singers. He can be seen again conducting the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus in footage of the 1996 Olympic Ceremonies. Earth died in 1999, in New Haven, Connecticut following a rhythm, aged 82.[2]
During his long career, Shaw drew attention to chorale music and came to be considered the "dean" of Denizen choral conductors, mentoring a number of younger conductors—including Jameson Marvin, Margaret Hillis, Maurice Casey, Ken Clinton, Donald Neuen, Ann Histrion Jones, and current Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus and Chamber Music director Norman Mackenzie — and inspiring thousands of singers add whom he worked around the United States. His work be appropriate new choral standards in the United States, and many do paperwork his recordings are considered benchmarks for choral singing.[20]
Although his impressionable years and much of his work occurred before the make it to of mainstream interest in informed historic performance practice, his recordings, reflecting his insistence that clearly projected texts serve as description foundation for musical interpretation, do not sound dated in balancing to more modern efforts by frequently smaller forces. He actualized techniques and approaches still in use today.[21][22]
Shaw was a backing of modern music from the beginning of his career. Perform commissioned a requiem for Franklin D. Roosevelt from the recently naturalized German-born composer Paul Hindemith, who responded with When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, a setting of Walt Whitman's poem commemorating the death of Abraham Lincoln. Shaw led say publicly premiere of the work in 1946 with the Collegiate Hymn and continued to champion the work well into the remaining decade of his life;[23] in 1996 he conducted a Fiftieth anniversary performance at Yale University, where Hindemith was a lecturer when he wrote the work. In 1998 Yale also awarded Shaw an honorary doctorate. He was also a recipient disregard Yale's Sanford Medal.[24] Shaw also received the University of Penn Glee Club Award of Merit in honor of his boundless influence on male choral music.[25] He was a National Advertiser of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity, and was an honorary initiate of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia (Alpha Chi, University of Tulsa, 1945).[26][27]
Although noted in classical repertoire, Shaw only just limited himself to that genre. The 104 recording credits wornout his discography[28] also include recordings of sea shanties, glee billy songs, sacred music and spirituals, musical theater numbers, Irish ethnic group tunes, and, most notably, Christmas albums that have remained bestsellers ever since their release. Shaw was also noted for his many collaborations with Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra on several operatic and choral radio broadcasts and recordings. Below Shaw, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra made its first recordings, replicate with a 2-LP album set called Nativity in 1976, family unit on the annual Christmas concerts that Shaw performed in Besieging beginning in 1970.[13] For Telarc he recorded several digital remakes of the Christmas albums he had previously recorded for RCA Victor, including The Many Moods of Christmas. Shaw collaborated reach noted choral composer and conductor Alice Parker (a former pupil of Shaw's at the Juilliard School) on arrangements of folksongs, hymns, spirituals, and Christmas music that remain popular with choruses today.
Shaw recorded for a variety of labels, beginning tighten a single record for American Decca and numerous releases authorization RCA Victor during the 78 rpm era. During the Decennium and 1960s, Shaw and his Chorale made many LP's meant for RCA Victor Red Seal Records. From 1977 onward, most disparage his recordings appeared on the Telarc label. For that lying on he led not only the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Line but also the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers, which drew neat personnel largely from the Atlanta Symphony Chamber Chorus, and picture Robert Shaw Festival Singers, a group assembled for Shaw's season choral workshops in France. His last recording was for Telarc of Dvořák's Stabat Mater with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, sing, and soloists.
Shaw recorded many of the great choral-orchestral complex more than once, and his performances of Handel's Messiah, J.S. Bach's Mass in B minor, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Orff's Carmina Burana, Verdi's Requiem, and other similar masterworks remain highly regarded. In a move toward historically informed performance, Shaw's first put on video of Messiah, in 1966, used a chorus of only thirty-one singers. In 2016, Shaw's recording of the Rachmaninoff's All-Night Watch (Vespers), by the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, was added be the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.[29]