Robert Baker
Voice
rbaker@gwu.edu
ext. 49032
Phillips Hall B-147
Bachelor of Music Education, 1979, Lebanon Valley College (Pennsylvania);
Master of Music, 1987, Manhattan School of Music;
Doctor of Musical Arts, 1990, The Catholic University of America
A central figure in the Washington-area classical music scene, Robert Baker has been featured by The Washington Opera in numerous roles totaling more than 250 performances. In the 2004/2005 season, he was seen in Andrea Chénier, Democracy, and Die Zauberflöte with the company. In the 2005/2006 season, he will sing in his seventh opening night as Danieli in I vespri siciliani. He has also sung ten roles with the Washington Concert Opera.
Recent career highlights include singing the role of Ishmael in the world premiere of Peter Westergaard’s Moby Dick at Princeton University, his Metropolitan Opera debut in Prokfiev's 's War and Peace, which he also recorded during The Spoleto Festival’s production in 1999, released on the Chandos label; acclaimed work with The Washington Opera including its tour to Japan where he sang roles in all three productions, and the release of a recording of the songs of Charles Martin Loeffler entitled A Dream Within a Dream (Koch: 1999).
With the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin, Mr. Baker was soloist on the 1996 Grammy Award-Winning recording Of Rage and Rembrance by John Corigliano (BMI: 1996) and was soloist for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony during the NSO’s Beethoven Festival in 1998.
Performances outside Washington include the title role in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex at Princeton University; and Quint in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw with the New Jersey Opera Festival for which The New York Times praised him as "riveting and dynamic."
Mr. Baker's other memorable concerts have been in Tel Aviv with the Israel Philharmonic in Mozart's Mass in C Minor, in France in a concert tour of wide-ranging repertoire with the Choral Arts Society of Washington, and in Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All with the Baltimore Opera.
The Coordinator of Vocal Activities at The George Washington University and artist-in-residence at Foundry United Methodist Church, Mr. Baker and his wife live in Arlington, VA with their daughter, Madeline, a second-year member of the Children’s Chorus of Washington.