A baton for all seasons

Rob Fisher’s credits range from solo pianist to musical arranger to sought-after conductor on Broadway and with symphony and opera orchestras. Here he talks about his career trajectory, podium style, and admiration for the stars of this year’s Lyric season opening gala.

When did you first embark on your musical path?

I asked for piano lessons when I was six, and I played for everything at school and church growing up. By the fourth grade, I was writing a show. I knew I’d do music my entire life, but it just didn’t seem like a reliable career, so I went to Duke University and majored in botany to be a marine biologist. But I’ve never worked a botanical day. I’ve only worked music jobs.

How did you move from piano to conducting?

I was doing summer stock during college, playing the piano in the orchestra and leading from the piano, and it often happens that the person who’s taught everyone the music suddenly has to stand up and conduct. One of the reasons I went to American University and got a graduate degree was to get my conducting skills together — because I could see the moment was going to come. But because I was such a classical-music kid, I really wanted to learn classical conducting technique. So that’s what we did — Beethoven and Mahler, and some Puccini. We did all kinds of stuff, and I value those lessons tremendously. The path that unfolded in front of me kept being heavy doses of show business — but I still love playing Beethoven sonatas and Chopin ballades. There are a lot of things about conducting that I enjoy more; it’s about being the facilitator for the musicians and getting the group energy unified, which is a responsibility. It’s not the ability to control other people at all. It’s the ability to feel what they’re bringing and put it together.

What differences do you find between classical ensembles and musical theater orchestras?

Broadway bands know they’re going to be doing the show for a long time, so there are certain elements they want to get specific about, because it’s a forever thing. Opera orchestras are more like symphony orchestras in that there’s so much classical training, and you can just use that vocabulary and get speedy results. But if you want something to swing, that can take a longer time for opera and symphony orchestras. Broadway orchestras have to be told to not swing. 

What are you looking forward to most about the Lyric Gala?

I loved the Lyric Opera Orchestra very much when we did Sound of Music [2013/14]. I really enjoyed their commitment to the music, even though it wasn’t Puccini. I’ve found that to be the case in really good orchestras everywhere — like the NY Philharmonic. They will lay into My Fair Lady like it’s their favorite Mahler, and it’s thrilling! They do not look down on it or pooh-pooh it. 

And you know these performers well?

Stokes and I have done a lot of things together. I remember seeing him in that 1991 revival of Oh Kay! and thinking, “There’s a really good leading man! Tall and good-looking and with a tremendous voice.” And Laura — I mean, she is gorgeous, all the time, and she has this beautiful voice that’s happy being a soprano or happy singing folk music. He was born to be a leading man, she was born to be a leading lady. We’re just super excited to get together and make music — because as well as being tremendous communicators, they’re really good musicians.

You helped found the hit Encores! series at City Center. How did that come about?

That’s my other big super-proud thing. When Judith Dakin, who’d been at Brooklyn Academy of Music, came over to run City Center, she really wanted to find a way to bring music theater back there. She and I had done a giant Gershwin festival at BAM, so as soon as she got to City Center she called: “How can we do this?” We both love the older shows with the great orchestrations and great songs that have terrible books. So the original concept was, “These are things that aren’t going to get revived, but their scores must be heard!” We were trying to make it sound exactly the way it would have sounded. That first season, we didn’t know if we were going to be able to manage it, and by the fifth or sixth season, people were willing their seats to their grandchildren. It became such a thing!

How did you get involved with Garrison Keillor's “American Radio Company”?

Keillor married a Danish girl back in the late ’80s, and he took a break and went to Denmark. Then he missed performing on the radio, but was anxious about going back to the Twin Cities, and so settled in New York. He wanted to start a new radio show that had a much bigger diversity of music. So he interviewed two or three people, and I got the job. We started the Coffee Club Orchestra, which could play anything. We had the widest possible variety of singers and performers, and we accompanied all the scripts. I love working out underscores for dialogue, whether it’s a radio show or it’s onstage. It was a thrilling time to be performing live.

You have an extensive discography. Is it important to you to have your work preserved for posterity? 

Some of those Encores! shows never had a proper cast album, and now they do, with original orchestrations. So that’s a source of pride. I’ve had the privilege to work with really great engineers and editors, and I love the process soup to nuts — how the microphones are set up, where everybody is placed, and then listening to the take, deciding can it be improved or do we move it on, and then going in and splicing things together and making everything perfect — I love all that.

What fulfills you in your offstage life?

It’s all nature. That’s one of the reasons I moved to New Mexico. I’m not a city person. I pretended for decades. Now I just love the place where I am. It full-on recharges me day and night. I’m very attuned to the cycles of the sun and the moon. It’s beautiful there everyday. The views from my house are stunning. The light on the mountains changes all day long, and you can see storms moving around all over the place. I miss it when I’m not there.

Louise T. Guinther, longtime senior editor at Opera News, is an arts writer based in New York.