Conductor Traveled a Symphony of Sites En Route to UCLA

Jon Robertson’s path to the conductor’s podium at Royce Hall has been anything but direct.

Born in Jamaica, the new music director of the UCLA Symphony Orchestra spent part of his childhood in Los Angeles, after which he studied in New York and taught at colleges in Alabama and Massachusetts.

Robertson, 50, also serves as conductor and music director for an orchestra in Norway. And he has traveled thousands of miles around the country, and the world, as a concert pianist and guest conductor.

“I am honored and excited to be at UCLA,” said Robertson, who led the 60-student orchestra in concert for the first time last month. “I feel that the potential at UCLA for having a world-class orchestra performance is phenomenal.”

Robertson, who commutes to Westwood from his home in Redlands two days a week, said a student orchestra presents a special set of challenges.

University students have many demands in their lives, he noted. This means turnover is high among the musicians, and it is always difficult to find enough rehearsal time.

Nonetheless, Robertson said, he is eager to expand the orchestra program. He hopes to increase the number of concerts by the symphony from three to as many as six each year. The next concert is March 3.

Robertson also believes it is part of his responsibility to help his students prepare for the working world.

“I want to give them a taste of what the professional approach is,” he said. “It has been very helpful for me to have a professional background which I can use to prepare students to go out into the world.”

To help prepare students, Robertson can draw on his lifetime of experience. He has been performing publicly since he was 9, when he made his debut in Los Angeles as pianist.

He gave concerts throughout the United States as a youth and, at 16, won a scholarship to New York’s prestigious Juilliard School of Music. He went on to receive bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in music.

After years of piano study and performance, he found his interest in conducting growing.

“I began to study conducting through the choral route before I got very involved in orchestral conducting,” he said. “There is a mystical energy that goes on between the conductor and orchestra, and I seemed to have a lot of success (at it).”

Along the way, he served as chairman of the music department at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala. Then he took a faculty position at Atlantic University in Massachusetts, where he started working consistently with an orchestra.

His big break came when he became music director of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in Norway and began doing guest-conducting stints around the world.

“I had never seen any black conductors at that time,” he said. “It seemed like there were some very serious doors to break down and I wanted to help open the door and do a job so well that I can make it easier for another minority or African-American.”

In addition to his new duties at UCLA, Robertson is conductor and musical director of the Redlands Symphony Orchestra, and remains the principal guest conductor of the Kristiansand orchestra.

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Theology professor Jeffrey Siker has been appointed to Loyola Marymount University’s T. Marie Chilton Chair for the Humanities.

The chair consists of a $5,000 grant awarded to a faculty member in the humanities to pursue scholarly research during the summer.

Siker, a Westchester resident, plans to complete a book on use of the Bible in 20th-Century ethics.

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Sculptor and painter Brett Livingstone Strong has been elected to the board of directors of Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles.

Strong will assist Big Brothers with fund-raising and public relations programs. He is a resident of Pacific Palisades.

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Mark Kaufmann received the award for Best New Play of 1992 from the Denver Critics Assn.

Kaufmann’s award-winning play was entitled “Evil Little Thoughts.” He is a speech and theater arts teacher at Bel-Air Prep School in Los Angeles.

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Several Westside residents were honored during Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center’s festivities for National Philanthropy Day on Nov. 20 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Honorees included Diane Parr of Santa Monica, Gilbert Bohrer of Brentwood and Dr. Hugh MacDonald of West Los Angeles.

Each recipient was presented a medallion for his or her accomplishments and contributions.

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Dr. David Solomon, director of the UCLA Center on Aging, received the American Geriatrics Society’s Mylo Leavitt Award.

The award was given Nov. 17 at the society’s annual meeting in Washington.

Solomon, who is also a professor of medicine at the UCLA School of Medicine, is nationally recognized for his work in geriatric medicine and his studies of issues facing older people. He is a graduate of Brown University and Harvard Medical School.

He lives in Santa Monica.