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North Carolina native Evan Rogister is the first conductor to lead performances by a major American theater of Karol Szymanowski's 20th century masterpiece King Roger, in a new production for the Santa Fe Opera by acclaimed director Stephen Wadsworth of which Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times proclaimed "The conductor Evan Rogister had a great night, performing the three-act work without an intermission. He drew nuanced and voluptuous playing from the Santa Fe Opera orchestra."
Opening his 2012-13 with a return to Houston Grand Opera, Maestro Rogister will conduct a new production of La bohème directed by John Caird. He will then make his Lyric Opera of Chicago debut with a revival of Rigoletto, followed by concert performances of André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire starring Renée Fleming. Marking a return to Santa Fe Opera Rogister will end his season conducting a world premier of Theodore Morrison’s Oscar, based on the life of Oscar Wilde, featuring David Daniels in the title role. Symphonic appearances include debuts with the orchestra of Dallas and the San Antonio Symphony in an evening of Mozart, Adams and Dvorak.
A dual citizen of United
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North Carolina native Evan Rogister is the first conductor to lead performances by a major American theater of Karol Szymanowski's 20th century masterpiece King Roger, in a new production for the Santa Fe Opera by acclaimed director Stephen Wadsworth of which Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times proclaimed "The conductor Evan Rogister had a great night, performing the three-act work without an intermission. He drew nuanced and voluptuous playing from the Santa Fe Opera orchestra."
Opening his 2012-13 with a return to Houston Grand Opera, Maestro Rogister will conduct a new production of La bohème directed by John Caird. He will then make his Lyric Opera of Chicago debut with a revival of Rigoletto, followed by concert performances of André Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire starring Renée Fleming. Marking a return to Santa Fe Opera Rogister will end his season conducting a world premier of Theodore Morrison’s Oscar, based on the life of Oscar Wilde, featuring David Daniels in the title role. Symphonic appearances include debuts with the orchestra of Dallas and the San Antonio Symphony in an evening of Mozart, Adams and Dvorak.
A dual citizen of United States and Germany, Maestro Rogister recently completed a two-year stint as Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper Berlin under its music director Donald Runnicles. During this time Maestro Rogister had particular success with performances of symphonic operas such as Tannhäuser, Rienzi, Otello, and Hänsel und Gretel, in addition to numerous repertoire evenings of La bohème, Don Giovanni, Otello, Carmen, and Die Zauberflöte. He made another outstanding debut at Stockholm's Royal Swedish Opera in 2012, with critically acclaimed performances of a new production of Lohengrin.
His United States operatic debut took place at the Houston Grand Opera with performances of Hänsel und Gretel and later La boheme while serving as a conducting fellow in a position created for him by music director Patrick Summers. In 2009, Rogister made his Seattle Opera debut to great critical acclaim conducting the renowned Robert Lepage production of Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung, about which the Seattle Post Intelligencer, said he “…made the orchestra sound like another -- electrifying with total attention to detail.”
Recent orchestral engagements include debuts with the Orchestre National de Montpellier, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, the Bochum Symphoniker and the Prague Chamber Orchestra as well as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Alabama Symphony.
Evan Rogister received a bachelor of music degree at Indiana University where he first enrolled as a trombone major, switching to vocal studies under famed bass Giorgio Tozzi. During graduate studies in voice at the Juilliard School he began expressing interest in conducting, which subsequently sent him to Paris for training at the National Conservatory. He also worked with legendary conducting teacher Gustav Meier at the Peabody Conservatory.
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Reviews
"Rogister conducts with flash and feeling, guiding a performance that is as persuasive in the tiniest grace notes of orchestration as in the sweeping surges of gorgeous melody."
Everett Evans, Houston Chronicle
"The conductor Evan Rogister had a great night, performing the three-act work [King Roger] without an intermission. He drew nuanced and voluptuous playing from the Santa Fe Opera orchestra. "
Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times
"Guest conductor Evan Rogister led the orchestra through Tchaikovsky's deeply expressive "Serenade for Strings," Sibelius' broad, stirring Symphony No. 2 and Arutiunian's powerful Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra, featuring MSO principal trumpeter Mark Niehaus. Rogister and the players gave elegant shape to the Tchaikovsky, filling the piece with graceful interpretive details."
Elaine Scmidt, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"This vibrant young conductor, making his SFO debut here, knows his way around Szymanowski’s challenging score. He’s alert to every nuance, doesn’t overplay the work’s exoticism, coaxes wonderful detail work from the SFO’s never-better orchestra and provides some of the most shattering climaxes ever to emerge from the local pit."
John Stege, Santa Fe Reporter
"Guest conductor Evan Rogister showed particular sensitivity to the exquisite melodies in Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings at Friday night’s Milwaukee Symphony concert. Rogister’s awareness to the subtleties of the Elégie especially hit home. He phrased the opening scales as if delivering them parlando.……. Rogister, a singer before he took up conducting, had equally compelling ideas about all four movements of the Serenade. He expressed them through his long, sinuous arms, which promoted a gorgeous legato and rich, viscous tone in the slow music.”"
Tom Strini, Third Coast Digest
"For creating the endlessly sumptuous sounds of the Bartók score and the marvelous mosaic of Schoenberg's musical moments, full marks must go to the Seattle Opera Orchestra under the inspiring baton of the young American maestro Evan Rogister. "
John F. Hulcoop, Opera News
"The last factor is the conductor, without whom many of the effects of the production would fail. Evan Rogister, in his house debut, made the orchestra sound like another -- electrifying with total attention to detail. He had the idiom of both composers in hand."
R. M. Campbell, Seattle Post Intelligencer
"And in the pit, the young conductor Evan Rogister elicits wondrous playing from the orchestra "
Bernard Jacobson, The Seattle Times
"Under Evan Rogister, making his Seattle Opera debut, the orchestra played for its life."
David Stabler, The Oregonian