Robert Shaw Named S.D. Guest Conductor

Robert Shaw, noted choral director and music director emeritus of the Atlanta Symphony, has been appointed principal guest conductor of the San Diego Symphony.

The 73-year-old musician had already been scheduled to conduct three concerts Dec. 1-3, a program of three large choral works with the orchestra and the San Diego Master Chorale.

Shaw, a native Californian, launched his musical career in the 1940s as founder and director of the Robert Shaw Chorale. His first post as an orchestral conductor was music director of the San Diego Symphony from 1953-57 (when the orchestra’s season was restricted to the summer, from which he moved to the Cleveland Orchestra and then to the Atlanta Symphony. His recordings with Atlanta won him 11 Grammy Awards and a Gold Record Award for the first classical music recording to sell more than 1 million copies.

Shaw returned to the local podium as a guest conductor in January, when he conducted the orchestra and Master Chorale in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

“It was a great pleasure to return to San Diego and to work with the orchestra, which certainly has matured from the orchestra I knew 40 years ago,” he said.

According to Frank Almond, music director of the San Diego Master Chorale, after the Beethoven concert, Shaw was enthusiastic about scheduling programs with Almond’s choral forces. Almond, a member of the San Diego State University music faculty, is on sabbatical leave studying with Shaw at Georgia’s Emory University, where Shaw directs a choral conducting institute.

The San Diego Symphony’s music director designate, Yoav Talmi, and executive director, Wesley O. Brustad, announced the Shaw appointment Monday morning. They also said Shaw will conduct a performance of Mozart’s “Great” C Minor Mass with the symphony and chorus in January, 1991, to mark the bicentennial of the composer’s death.