For almost 20 years, Rob Kapilow has brought the joy and wonder of classical music – and unraveled some of its mysteries – to audiences of all ages and backgrounds. Characterized by his unique ability to create an “aha” moment for his audiences and collaborators, whatever their level of musical sophistication or naiveté, Kapilow’s work brings music into people’s lives: opening new ears to musical experiences and helping people to listen actively rather than just hear. As the Boston Globe said, “It’s a cheering thought that this kind of missionary enterprise did not pass from this earth with Leonard Bernstein. Rob Kapilow is awfully good at what he does. We need him.”

Kapilow’s range of activities is astonishingly broad, including his What Makes It Great?® presentations (now in their fifteenth seasons in New York and Boston ), his family compositions and Family Musik® events, and his “Citypieces”. The reach of his interactive events and activities is wide, both geographically and culturally: from Native American tribal communities in Montana and inner-city high school students in Louisiana to wine-tasters in the Napa Valley, and from tots barely out of diapers to musicologists long out of Ivy League programs, his audiences are diverse and unexpected, but invariably rapt and keen to come back for more.

A frequent guest speaker for business groups, foundations, hospitals, law schools, math departments and conferences, Rob Kapilow is constantly finding connections and intersections between music and the outside world, making art essential to everyday life.

Kapilow’s popularity and appeal are reflected in notable invitations and achievements: he appeared on NBC’s Today Show in conversation with Katie Couric; he presented a special What Makes It Great?® event for broadcast on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center in January 2008; and he has written two highly popular books published by Wiley/Lincoln Center: All You Have To Do Is Listen (2008) which won the PSP Prose Award for Best Book in Music and the Performing Arts, and What Makes It Great (2011), the first book of its kind to be especially designed for the iPad with embedded musical examples.

A documentary film, named Summer Sun, Winter Moon after Kapilow’s choral/symphonic work of the same name, which traces the process of that work’s composition from its conception through to its premiere, has been broadcast more than 250 times on Public Television since 2009.

Rob Kapilow dedicates his summer months to writing and composing new music, most recently a large-scale work commissioned by the Marin Symphony to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, which will be premiered in June 2012.

Kapilow’s career has been marked by numerous major awards and grants. He won first place in the Fontainebleau Casadesus Piano Competition and was the second-place winner of the Antal Dorati Conductor’s Competition with the Detroit Symphony. As a composer, Kapilow was a featured on Chicago Public Radio’s prestigious “Composers In America” series and is a recipient of an Exxon “Meet-the-Composer” grant and numerous ASCAP awards.

Kapilow has conducted many of North America's finest orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Symphony, the St. Louis, Atlanta, Toronto, and Detroit Symphonies and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. He is an exclusive Schirmer composer and his many compositions have been performed by nearly every major American orchestra as well as orchestras in Europe, Asia and Australia.

He lives in River Vale, NJ, with his wife and three children.

September 2011

 

FamilyMusik®

Rob Kapilow, affectionately nicknamed America’s “pied piper of classical music,” has found many new young fans through his family compositions and presentations. Kapilow’s new piece for families, his Tap Dance Concerto, was jointly commissioned by the New York’s Lincoln Center, the Celebrity Series of Boston, and Vancouver’s Music in the Morning; this colorful collaboration with dancer Ayodele Casel was premiered in those three cities last season.

Kapilow has written numerous commissioned works, including the first musical setting of a Dr. Seuss work, Green Eggs and Ham. Kapilow’s inimitable presentation “Green Eggs and Hamadeus”, which features his own work alongside Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in a lively mix of discussion and performance, is now available on CD on the Artemis Classics label. Detroit audiences will see Rob Kapilow for the first time in March 2008 when he presents “Green Eggs and Hamadeus” with the Detroit Symphony. And the following month, Cerritos audiences, long familiar with Kapilow’s What Makes It Great?© shows, will also get a taste of his FamilyMusik©fare when he presents “Green Eggs and Hamadeus” there.

The Seuss work has achieved great popularity in the theater world, prompting Boston Globe music critic Richard Dyer to name it the most popular children’s piece since Peter and the Wolf. Other compositions include Dr. Seuss’s Gertrude McFuzz; a Christmas-Hanukkah pair of pieces (Chris Van Allsburg’s Polar Express, for the Boston Celebrity Series, and Elijah’s Angel, a setting of the children’s book by Michael Rosen); and Kapilow’s first opera, Many Moons, based on the James Thurber story, with a libretto by Hilary Blecher. Another popular family piece by Kapilow is Play Ball!, a setting of “Casey at the Bat”, which was performed as part of Lincoln Center’s FamilyMusik© series in March 2007. Great Performers of Lincoln Center introduced a new series of Kapilow’s FamilyMusik© programs during the 2004-05 season (marking the first family music series at the prestigious venue). Kapilow also presents an annual FamilyMusik©series in Boston (his twelfth season there begins in November) and in Vancouver, and he will introduce family music to numerous Toronto youngsters in February when he collaborates with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra – in ten concerts – presenting his inimitable animal-themed program, “And Furthermore, They Bite!”.