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Robert Gardner is again outstanding - his "The Indians" luxuriates in the mesmeric,
visionary quality associated with Ives at his most personal. –12/08 Gramophone Magazine
Five songs from Gabriela Lena Frank’s “ongoing” cycle, Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea, bring the five CDs to a conclusion - deeply poignant, emotionally conflicted, and beautifully sung by baritone Robert Gardner. --1/09 Audiophile Audition
***** excellent…baritone Robert Gardner and pianist J.J. Penna are especially noteworthy. –1/09 Amazon.com
Gardner has all the virtues of a traditional art-song interpreter: fine control of dynamics and pitch wedded to expressive singing and clear diction. He's on his way to being as effective in these songs as his great recorded competition, Gerald Finley and William Sharp. His elegant contributions make some of the most rewarding listening here:
sample especially his impressive German and English versions… –12/08 Opera News
Gardner launches the two discs…[Ives discs 4 and 5] in fine declamatory style with “Majority” and “Paracelsus” respectively.
–12/08 BBC Music Magazine
Robert Gardner sings the bejeezis out of this thing. …A series of high-flown statements about existential meaning, the text, by Ives himself, doesn't really make much sense. "The masses are thinking, whence comes the art of the world?" Honestly, I doubt whether the masses think that. Fortunately, baritone Robert Gardner momentarily suspends disbelief. Gardner and Howell had the most beautiful voices in the group, and they also know their way around a song. –12/08 ClassicalCDreview.com
…elevated with four excellent soloists… Loh picked the soloists and selected well. Baritone Robert Gardner was truly commanding, vivid and a nicely agile performer. –12/08 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
…fine performance from Robert Gardner’s smooth baritone. –10/08 Fanfare Magazine
Gardner is a stand out in particular here for his sensitivity to Ives's European/American duality.
This is an essential purchase. –9/08 BBC Music Magazine
Robert Gardner won the audience over with his swaggering stye and beautiful baritone voice in his interpretation of
five songs by Charles Ives. –8/08 Muso Magazine
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American baritone Robert Gardner has appeared with numerous opera houses and symphony orchestras in the U.S., Europe, and Asia including New York City Opera, Washington National Opera, Bavarian National Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Colorado, Central City Opera, Aspen Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Palm Beach Opera, Edmonton Opera, the Munich Philharmonic, and the major symphonies in Pittsburgh, Seattle, Dallas, Denver, San Diego, Santa Rosa, New Haven and Kansas City, the Northeast Pennsylvania Philharmonic and the Daejeon Symphony in S. Korea. Originally from Denver, Colorado, he has been described as "a superb young artist" by WGBH Radio, the New York Times calls his commitment to new music "robust... impressive... brilliantly effective... the score presented with a proprietary authority," an "electrifying performance" says NPR Sunday Morning Edition. The Hartford Courant hails "a talent of a high order," "his lithe, burnished baritone a consistent pleasure" and the Kansas City Star raves "finally we heard someone sing with intelligence, passion and bravura."
Opera credits include debuts as Marcello in La Boheme at New York City Opera, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, and Zurga in The Pearl Fishers. He has appeared as Robert Storch in R. Strauss’ domestic comedy Intermezzo as a guest debut artist for Aspen Music Festival under the baton of David Zinman, and recently supported the casts of the U.S. premiere of Ades’ The Tempest as Prospero and R. Strauss’ Salome as Jokanaan for Santa Fe Opera. He has appeared as Silvano (Ballo) and Morales (Carmen) for the Bavarian National Opera, and has served as a leading baritone for American Opera Projects for several years. He has appeared as Germont in La Traviata, as Eugene Onegin, Michele and Gianni Schicchi in Il Trittico, Belcore in L'Elisir d'Amore, Sid in Albert Herring, as well as the Kaiser von Atlantis.
Recent concert performances include Carnegie Hall premieres with MidAmerica Productions, as well as with hosts Dawn Upshaw and John Harbison in appearances for the Weill Institute, Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the Choral Society of Grace Church (Union Square, New York City) with whom he also appeared in R. V. Williams' Fantasia on Christmas Carols and appeared again May 2007 in his Dona Nobis Pacem in a spring "Concert for Peace." He sang Ein Deutches Requiem with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Carmina Burana and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center with the National Chorale, and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with the Lexington Philharmonic.
Recent recital engagements include New York City, Boston, Dallas, Paris, Marseille, and Denver for the Pro Musicis Foundation with collaborative pianists Lydia Brown and Chris Zemliauskas, and for the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York and the Austrian Embassy in Washington D.C. singing Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and Das Lied von der Erde with collaborative pianist Thomas Bagwell.
Mr. Gardner is a roster artist of the American Modern Ensemble in New York, singing new music by John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Rob Paterson in 2008, and by David Heuser and Aaron Copland in 2009 (with Peter Schickele), and is now collaborating with Kernis on a new symphony for Seattle Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Gerard Schwartz. Other new music projects include an evening-length work being written by Schirmer composer Gabriela Lena Frank (what he lovingly calls "an epic cycle for mixed baritone"); a unique setting of texts by Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra entitled The Songs of Cifar and the Sweet Sea, most recently performed last summer at Music@Menlo. Robert has also been instrumental in the creation of new operas, including Before Night Falls by Jorge Martín, and Sarah and Hagar by composer Gerald Cohen, and has even appeared at Birdland in New York with jazz sensation Hilary Kole.
Gardner is a featured artist on the 6-CD set of the complete songs of Charles Ives presently being released by Naxos Records. He has performed on NPR's Weekend Edition, Boston’s WGBH radio, New York’s WQXR radio, Denver’s KVOD radio, and on the A&E channel’s Breakfast with the Arts, as well as on several seasonal PBS broadcasts.
Robert Gardner is the 2007 winner of the Lili Boulanger Memorial Award, chosen from five worldwide nominees (chiefly composers, conductors and instrumentalists) and by the foundation started in 1936 by famed teacher-pianist-conductor Nadia Boulanger, is considered that year's "musician of exceptional talent and integrity," the third singer in its prestigious history. A 2001 Pro Musicis International Award winner, he is also the winner of the 1999 William Matheus Sullivan Foundation Award, the 2000 Gerda Lissner Award, and the 2000 Denver Lyric Opera Guild Competition. He trained at Yale Opera of the Yale University School of Music under Richard and Doris Cross and Sherrill Milnes, and participated in young artist programs with Santa Fe Opera, the Bavarian National Opera in Munich, and the Steans Institute for Young Artists at Ravinia in Chicago. He is a member of the Society of American Fight Directors and has choreographed safe, yet effective stage conflicts professionally, and is a professional animal trainer in his spare time.
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