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Source: http://www.atlantasymphony.org/staff/shaw.htm
Robert Shaw
Music Director Emeritus and Conductor Laureate
April 30, 1916-January 25, 1999
 ROBERT SHAW became Music Director Emeritus and Conductor Laureate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 1988, after serving as Music Director of
the Orchestra for 21 years. During his tenure as Music Director, he built the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra into a major American orchestra, garnering widespread acclaim through national and international tours and
award-winning recordings.
A regular guest conductor of major orchestras in this country and abroad, Mr. Shaw was also in demand as a teacher and
lecturer in leading U.S. colleges and universities. The Robert Shaw Institute was founded in 1988 to foster excellence in music making, especially in the
choral arts. The Institute's summer festivals attracted admiring attention from the international press and produced a number of recordings by the
Robert Shaw Festival Singers. This led to collaboration with Carnegie hall in the annual Robert Shaw Choral Workshops.
Mr. Shaw's distinguished career began in New York, where he formed and
directed the Collegiate Chorale and where he prepared choruses for such renowned conductors as Arturo Toscanini and Bruno Walter. Soon he was conducting major symphony orchestras, and in 1948, he formed the Robert
Shaw Chorale which, over the next 17 years, became America's premiere touring choral group and was sent by the U.S. State Department on several
tours to 30 countries in Europe (including the former Soviet Union), the Middle East and Latin America.
Robert Shaw served as Music Director of the San Diego Symphony
Orchestra and as Associate Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, working closely with George Szell for 10 years, before becoming Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 1967.
Throughout his career, Mr. Shaw received abundant recognition for his work. His awards include 16 Grammy Awards; England's Gramophone Magazine
Award; a Gold Record for the first RCA classical recording to sell more than a million copies; honorary degrees and citations from forty U.S. colleges
and universities; four ASCAP awards for service to contemporary music; the first Guggenheim Fellowship ever awarded to a conductor; the Alice M.
Ditson Award for service to American Music; the George Peabody Medal for outstanding contributions to music in America; and the Gold Baton Award of
the American Symphony Orchestra League for "distinguished service to music and the arts."
Mr. Shaw was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Council
on the Arts, and was a 1991 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, the nation's highest honor to performing artists "who, through a lifetime of
accomplishment, have enriched American life by their achievement in the performing arts." He was named "Musician of the Year" in the 1992 edition
of Musical America, the international directory of the performing arts, and during the same year was awarded the National Medal of the Arts in a
White House ceremony. He was the 1993 recipient of the Conductors' Guild Theodore Thomas Award, in recognition of outstanding life achievement in
conducting as well as his contributions to the profession in the education and training of young conductors. In March 1997 he received the French
government's highest honor to artists, the medal of Officier des Arts et des Lettres. Mr. Shaw was the 1998 recipient of the Orchestra of St. Luke's
"Gift of Music" award in New York City, and that same year was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.
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