Position:
Professor Emeritus, Choral ConductingPhone:
(540) 665-4635Email: rshafe2@zhenrenqi.com
Employed Since:
1983–2016Applied Area(s):
Conducting, Choral
Conservatory Professional Highlights:
Honored by the Virginia Council on Higher Education with an Outstanding Faculty Award for his outstanding public service, research, and teaching, Robert Shafer is the only teacher in the arts to have received this award since its inception.
He received the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance of the Year for the live performance recording of The Washington Chorus and the Shenandoah Conservatory Choir in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.
Mr. Shafer conducts the Chorus’s subscription series; he prepared the Chorus and the Choral Arts Society for the Grammy Award-winning recording of John Corigliano’s Of Rage and Remembrance with Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra, as well as for the Grammy Award-nominated compact disc and film soundtrack recording of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov with Mstislav Rostropovich and the NSO. He has also prepared the Chorus for many of the world’s leading conductors, including Sir Neville Marriner, Seiji Ozawa, Adenek Macal, Christopher Warren-Green, and Charles Dutoit.
He has served as music director at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and is currently music director of The Washington Chorus.
Robert Shafer was a student of famed composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. He won first prize in composition at the Conservatoire Américain in 1969.
Ensemble(s):
Conservatory Choir
Chamber Choi
Educational History:
Artist Diploma, Conservatoire Américain (France); B.M., M.M., The Catholic University of America