Longtime ASO music director Robert Spano visits UGA March 24 as Delta Chair
The Willson Center and the Hugh Hodgson School of Music will welcome the renowned conductor and orchestra director Robert Spano to the University of Georgia on March 24, 2025 as the Willson Center’s annual Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding. Spano’s visit, which will include two public talks on campus and a workshop for UGA student composers with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, is part of the Willson Center’s Global Georgia public event series and the UGA Humanities Festival.
Spano is music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Laureate of the ASO, where he served as music director for 20 years. He will begin a three-year term as music director of the Washington National Opera with the 2025-2026 season.
“Engaging new work, hearing it come to life for the first time is always thrilling,” Spano said. “We have a great history of reading the works of the talented composers at UGA, and I’m so looking forward to having this opportunity again as Delta Chair.”
Spano has won four Grammy Awards and been nominated for eight, all for recordings with the ASO. He received the Georgia Governor’s Award for the Arts and Humanities in 2020, and was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2012 – one of just two classical musicians who have been so honored. Spano has served as music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School since 2011, overseeing hundreds of events and educational programs for students and young musicians, and directs the Aspen Conducting Academy. He is currently principal conductor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and Music School, and will transition to principal guest conductor for its 2025-2026 season.
One of the key organizers of Spano’s Delta Chair program is Peter Van Zandt Lane, associate professor and area chair of the Hodgson School’s department of music composition and theory. “The opportunity for our students to hear their orchestral compositions brought to life by a world-class orchestra is one of the unique experiences that sets UGA’s composition program apart from almost any other in the country,” he said. “There’s nothing more valuable than getting the immediate feedback from Maestro Spano and the Atlanta Symphony musicians for student composers striving to refine their artistic voices.”
UGA music composition students will participate in a workshop with Spano and ASO musicians in Atlanta on Friday, March 21. The students will meet privately with Spano before a public reading and rehearsal of their works by the orchestra in Atlanta Symphony Hall from 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. The students will then participate in a post-workshop discussion with Spano and ASO musicians, which will also be open to the public.
“I’m so grateful and excited to have this opportunity to hear the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra bring my music to life,” said Jason Capehart, a master’s candidate in composition at the Hodgson School. “To hear my music performed by some of the finest musicians in the world is something I’ve dreamed of since becoming a composer, and to share this opportunity with fellow composer friends from UGA is such an incredible honor.”
Spano will be in residence at UGA on Monday, March 24. He will give a public talk, “Behind the Baton: An Inside Look at How Major Orchestras Operate,” at 11:30 a.m. in Room 350 of the Miller Learning Center, and another public presentation at 5 p.m. in the Hodgson School’s Edge Recital Hall. Spano’s 5 p.m. talk will focus on the Atlanta School of Composers, a group including Jennifer Higdon, Christopher Theofanidis, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Gandolfi, and Adam Schoenberg, whose works Spano helped to commission and premiere throughout his tenure with the Atlanta Symphony. He will reflect on his cultivation of this important collection of 21st-century orchestral music, and share audio examples from performances.
The Hodgson School has held two previous student composing workshops with Spano and the ASO, in 2018 and 2022, each with primary support from a Willson Center Public Impact Grant. Annie Leeth, a 2019 Hodgson School graduate in music performance and composition, participated in the 2018 program.
“The Atlanta Symphony reading session was far beyond what I dreamed was possible when first coming into my undergraduate degree, and I will always think of it as a day that motivated me by showing me an extremely rewarding outcome for the long hours that go into making orchestral scores,” Leeth said.
The Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding, established by the Willson Center through the support of The Delta Air Lines Foundation, hosts outstanding global scholars, leading creative thinkers, artists, and innovators who engage with audiences on and off the UGA campus through lectures, seminars, discussions, and other community events. The Delta Chair program aims to foster conversations that engage with global perspectives through the humanities and arts. The chair was last held by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu in March 2024.
The Delta Chair is founded upon the legacy of the Delta Prize for Global Understanding, which from 1997-2011 was presented to individuals – including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ted Turner, Desmond Tutu, and Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter – whose initiatives promoted world peace by advancing understanding and cooperation among cultures and nations.