Robert Whalen
Photography by Keitaro Harada
Robert Whalen
Conductor/composer Robert Whalen is Music Director of SoundLAB, a creative laboratory for contemporary music in Philadelphia. Recent collaborators include the Curtis Institute, Institute on Disabilities at Temple University, American Philosophical Society, American Composers Forum, Free Library of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Music Department and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Whalen was personally selected by Lorin Maazel to serve as his Conducting Fellow at the Castleton Festival and has worked as Assistant Conductor at the WDR in Cologne. Whalen has previously served as the Director of the Chamber Orchestra at the University of Chicago. As Conductor of the Contemporary Music Workshop at the University of Minnesota, Whalen led numerous regional and world premieres including Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil and Helmut Lachenmann’s Zwei gefühle…Musik mit Leonardo. Whalen began his collaboration with Opera Philadelphia in 2019 as Assistant Chorus Master, and prepared the choruses for mainstage productions of The Love for Three Oranges, Semele, and Verdi’s Requiem. A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Whalen has collaborated with many leading composers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steven Stucky and Grammy-winning composer Augusta Read Thomas, Chaya Czernowin, Zosha di Castri, Clara Iannotta and many others.
A native of New York, Whalen earned a BA cum laude from Cornell University, a master’s degree from the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota.