CANCELED: Schubert’s Death and the Maiden

David Robertson–conductor, artist, thinker, and American musical visionary–occupies some of the most prominent platforms on the international music scene. A highly sought-after podium figure in the worlds of opera, orchestral music, and new music, Robertson is celebrated worldwide as a champion of contemporary composers, an ingenious and adventurous programmer, and a masterful communicator whose passionate advocacy for the art form is widely recognized. A consummate and deeply collaborative musician, Robertson is hailed for his intensely committed music making.

Robertson has served in numerous artistic leadership positions, such as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and a transformative 13-year tenure as Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. With St. Louis, he solidified its status as among the nation’s most innovative ensembles, establishing fruitful relationships with a spectrum of artists, and garnering a 2014 Grammy Award for the Nonesuch release of John Adams’ City Noir, in addition to numerous other recordings releases, such as Wynton Marsalis’s Swing Symphony with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, on Blue Engine Records, and Mozart Piano Concertos No. 17 in G Major K.453 and No. 24 in C Minor K.491 with Orli Shaham on Canary Classics. Earlier artistic leadership positions include at the Orchestre National de Lyon, as a protégé of Pierre Boulez, the Ensemble InterContemporain, and as Principal Guest Conductor at the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

David Robertson holds a rich and enduring collaboration with the New York Philharmonic, and in the Americas conducts many noted ensembles, including the Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, National, Houston, Dallas, Montréal and Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestras. Robertson has served as a Perspectives Artist at Carnegie Hall where he has also conducted, among others, The Met Orchestra, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He appears regularly with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Bayerischen Rundfunk, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, and other major European and international orchestras and festivals, ranging from the BBC Proms, to Musica Viva in Munich, to the New Japan Philharmonic, and Beijing’s NCPA Orchestra.

With the Metropolitan Opera, Robertson continues to build upon his deep conducting relationship, which included James Robinson’s 2019–20 season opening premier production of Porgy and Bess, and the premier of Phelim McDermott’s celebrated 2018 production of Così fan tutte, set in Coney Island. Since his 1996 Met Opera debut, The Makropulos Case, he has conducted a breathtaking range of projects, including the Met premier of John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer (2014); the 2016 revival of Janáček’s Jenůfa, then its first Met performances in nearly a decade; the premiere production of Nico Muhly’s Two Boys (2013); and many favorites, from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro to Britten’s Billy Budd. Robertson conducts at the world’s most prestigious opera houses, including La Scala, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Théâtre du Châtelet, and the San Francisco and Santa Fe Operas.

Since 2018, David Robertson has served as Director of Conducting Studies, Distinguished Visiting Faculty of The Juilliard School. In Fall 2019, he joined the newly formed Tianjin Juilliard Advisory Council, an international body created to guide the emerging Chinese campus of the Juilliard School. He conducts the Juilliard Orchestra annually at Carnegie Hall.

Robertson is the recipient of numerous awards and in 2010 was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France. He is devoted to supporting young musicians and has worked with students at the festivals of Aspen, Tanglewood, Lucerne, at the Paris Conservatoire, Music Academy of the West, and the National Orchestra Institute.  In 2014, he led the Coast to Coast tour of Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA.

Born in Santa Monica, California, David Robertson was educated at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied horn and composition before turning to orchestral conducting. He is married to pianist Orli Shaham and lives in New York.

Two-time Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke has been called a “luminous standout” (New York Times) and “equal parts poise, radiance, and elegant directness” (Opera News). Ms. Cooke is sought after by the world’s leading orchestras, opera companies, and chamber music ensembles for her versatile repertoire and commitment to new music.

In the 2020–2021 season, Ms. Cooke returns to Dallas Opera as Sylvie in the world premiere of Joby Talbot’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, conducted by Emmanuel Villaume. She was also scheduled to perform at the Metropolitan Opera as Hansel in Hansel and Gretel and San Francisco Opera as Offred in Poul Ruder’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In concert, she sings Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest under the baton of Edo de Waart, Bach’s Mass in B minor with the Orchestre National de France under the direction of Trevor Pinnock, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with the Minnesota Orchestra and music director Osmo Vänskä. Additionally, she performs a duo recital alongside soprano Susanna Phillips at Friends of Chamber Music in Portland, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana, Illinois, and the Shriver Center in Baltimore.

During the 2019–20 season, Ms. Cooke returned to the San Francisco Opera to reprise the title role in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, and was scheduled to perform Laurene Jobs in Mason Bates’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, a role she created in 2017 at Santa Fe Opera. Her orchestral appearances included Ravel’s Shéhérazade with the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest under conductor James Gaffigan, Mahler’s Das klagende Lied and Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht with the Houston Symphony under music director Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Meditations on Rilke with the Cleveland Orchestra under composer and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, and a concert version of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana with the Chicago Symphony under the baton of Riccardo Muti. Other scheduled appearances included reuniting with Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic for concerts of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 Resurrection at David Geffen Hall (New York), Barbican Hall (London), and The Royal Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), as well as Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Myung-Whun Chung at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Pittsburgh Symphony under Manfred Honneck as well as the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Spano, both in Atlanta and on tour at Carnegie Hall in New York. Ms. Cooke also undertook a residency with the San Francisco Symphony that encompassed concerts with the orchestra, educational events, chamber music performances, and a solo recital in Davies Hall. In recital, she returned to London’s Wigmore Hall with pianist Malcolm Martineau for songs of Brahms and Schumann, and performed at New York’s 92nd Street Y and the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater in Washington, D.C., alongside pianist Julius Drake featuring Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, Schumann’s Frauenliebe und –leben, and Zwölf Gedichte nach Justinus Kerner. Finally, Ms. Cooke sang the world premiere of Jake Heggie/Gene Scheer’s Violins of Hope with violinist Daniel Hope for Music at Kohl Mansion in California, and was scheduled to perform a solo recital of songs by Fauré, Debussy, Berlioz, Schumann, and Beethoven, at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.