Artist Profiles

Robert Olson, Conductor

Robert Olson, Artistic Director

"Electrifying! The most exciting musical experience I've had in eight years here. Period."
Kansas City Star "This great performance is the equal of any Eighth I've ever heard."
Fanfare magazine

"One of the major American conductors."
Musique in Belgium

"Exquisite! Breathtaking! Spiritual! Noble!"
The American Record Guide

"A world class performance."
On the Air Magazine

"The orchestra loved you, the public loved you."
Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra, Czech Republic

"Magnificent! A fine orchestra and an outstanding conductor."
Longmont Times-Call

Such is a sampling of reviews garnered by Maestro Robert Olson, Artistic Director and Conductor of the Colorado MahlerFest since its inception nineteen years ago. He brings an amazingly active and varied career to the podium, currently holding conducting posts with four different organizations, encompassing the entire spectrum of the concert stage -- symphony, opera and ballet -- and conducting nearly sixty performances a year.

Currently a resident of Kansas City, Dr. Olson holds posts with three other orchestras. He is the conductor for the Kansas City Ballet, a post he has held since 1992, having conducted more than 400 performances with the Kansas City and St. Louis Symphonies. He is Director of Orchestras/Opera at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where his two orchestras and opera productions consistently receive critical acclaim. With a repertoire of over 60 operas, recent productions include Turandot, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Manon, Ariadne auf Naxos, and many others. He is also Music Director and Conductor of the Longmont Symphony in Colorado, an orchestra that has consistently received rave reviews from Colorado critics. During his 23-year tenure, the orchestra has flourished, presenting an eleven-concert season to enthusiastic audiences.

Prior to his move to Kansas City he was on the faculty of the University of Colorado/Boulder College of Music for sixteen years, where he was music director of the opera program and Associate Conductor of Orchestras. Local audiences also know him as conductor for years of the immensely popular Colorado Gilbert & Sullivan Festival.

He has held conducting posts with the Omaha Symphony, Boulder Baroque Chamber Orchestra, Boulder Civic Opera, Arapaho Chamber Orchestra, Arvada Chamber Orchestra, the Colorado Lyric Theatre, and the Rocky Ridge Music Festival.

An active guest conductor, he has guest conducted many orchestras in the United States and made his European debut in 1990 in Belgium. This resulted in engagements in Venezuela, return invitations to Belgium, Bergamo and Milan, Italy, the Czech Republic, the Ljubljana Music Festival, Oporto, Portugal, and the National Symphony of China in Beijing. In February of 2001 he conducted four major Stravinsky works in a Stravinsky Festival sponsored by the Kansas City Symphony as well as five performances for the Miami City Ballet. In April of 2004 he took "first place" conducting the Korean National Symphony in a 10-orchestra competition, a concert that was televised live over much of Asia.

In addition to the success of the Mahler Eighth CD, critiqued as "legendary" by several national publications, his concert recording of the Wheeler version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony was recently made available on CD from the Colorado MahlerFest. This work received its world premiËre performance at MahlerFest X in 1997 after Olson and a small international team spent over a year editing and preparing the Wheeler realization. His recording of the same symphony for Naxos records with the Polish National Radio Orchestra was released in May 2002, to such reviews as "second only to Rattle and Berlin." He is also recorded on the CRS label.

He is married to Victoria Hagood-Olson. They have two children, Tori (18) and Chelsea (15), both budding musicians.

The Colorado MahlerFest, initiated by Olson on a dream and $400 nineteen years ago, has been nourished to become not only "one of Boulder's most valuable cultural assets," but a world class festival, confirmed by the awarding of the Mahler Gold Medal from the Vienna International Gustav Mahler Society in September, 2005 at the same time that the medal was also awarded to the New York Philharmonic.