He was an conductor born in Red Bluff, California, to a family where his father and grandfather were both ministers and his mother was a church choral singer.
He studied at Pomona College in Los Angeles and while there he joined the glee club and was asked to take over the choir for a faculty leader that was ill. Fred Waring who was making a movie there noticed the choir and was so impressed he asked him to set up a glee club in New York.
Venturing out in his professional career in music in the late 1930s/early 1940s, he established the Collegiate Chorale, which made a name for itself because of the racial integration it made. Becoming noticed they appeared with Arthur Toscanini and the NBC Symphony in 1945 in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and much impressing Toscanini, he worked with and arranged choirs for him until 1954.
In 1949 he formed his extremely successful Robert Shaw Chorale who went on to undertake worldwide US State Department sponsored tours where they visited over 30 countries and make numerous recordings for RCA Records.
In 1953 he was given the position of Music Director of the San Diego Symphony and he stayed there until 1957 until he undertook studies with George Szell and became his assistant for eleven years at the Cleveland Orchestra. While there he turned the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus into a highly acclaimed volunteer ensemble and would repeat this feat when he established the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus in his years of being the Music Director of the ASO from 1967 to 1988. After leaving this position in 1988, the ASO saw fit to bestow on him the title of Music Director Emeritus and Conductor Laureate.
Other ensembles he led during and after his ASO years were his Robert Shaw Chamber Singers and the Robert Shaw Festival Singers and he also established the Robert Shaw Institute which sponsors the Robert Shaw Festival and encourages the production and creation of the choral arts. Known for his countless recordings in all genres of music from glee club to sacred music he was the recipient of forty honorary degrees and citations, four ASCAP awards, 14 Grammy Awards, the Ditson Conductor’s Award, a Kennedy Center Honors in 1991 and a Guggenheim Fellowship, which made him the first conductor to ever receive one. He also won several other international awards and was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and American Classical Music Hall of Fame.
He had a stroke in 1999 and died in New Haven, Connecticut, at the age of 82, leaving behind him a wonderful legacy of choral singing and standards.
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus recordings
Angels We Have Heard on High (Traditional French/James Chadwick/Edward Barnes)
Telarc 80087 (CD: The Many Moods of Christmas)
Conductor – Robert Shaw
Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus recordings
A Babe is Born (Traditional English)
Musical Arts Association (promo CD)
Conductor – Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw Chamber Singers recordings
Angels We Have Heard on High (Traditional French/James Chadwick/Edward Barnes)
Telarc 80377 (CD: Songs of Angels)
El can dels ocells (Carol of the Birds/The Song of the Birds) (Traditional Catalonian)
Soprano – Janice Chandler
Conductor – Robert Shaw
Arranger- Alice Parker/Robert Shaw
Telarc 80461 (CD- A Robert Shaw Christmas/Angels on High)
Robert Shaw Chorale and Orchestra recordings
Angels We Have Heard on High (Traditional French/James Chadwick/Edward Barnes)
RCA 6429 (CD: A Festival of Carols)
Away in a Manger (William J Kirkpatrick/James Ramsey Murray)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella (Traditional/Emile Blemont/Marc-Antoine Charpentier/Louis-Denis Seguin)(English Translation: Edward Cuthbert Nunn)(Alternate Version: Nicolas Saboly)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
Deck the Halls (Traditional Welsh)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
The First Nowell (Traditional/Anonymous)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
Go Tell It On the Mountain (African-American spiritual/John Wesley Work Jr.)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Traditional/Anonymous)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (Charles Wesley/George Whitefield/Martin Madan/Felix Mendelssohn/William Hayman Cummings)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
I Saw Three Ships (Traditional/Anonymous)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker
It Came Upon The Midnight Clear (Edmund Sears/Richard Storrs Willis/Uzziah Christopher Burnap/Sir Arthur S. Sullivan)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker
Joy to the World (Isaac Watts/George Frideric Handel/Lowell Mason)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming (Traditional Anonymous German)
(Revisions and translations – Michael Praetorius/Melchior Vulpius/Friedrich Layriz/Harried Reynolds Kraugh/Theodore Baker/John C. Mattes)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
March of the Kings (Traditional/Joseph-Francois Domergue)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
O Come All Ye Faithful(John FrancisWade/Frederick Oakeley)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker
O Little Town of Bethleham (Phillips Brooks/Lewis Redner)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
The Shepherd’s Carol (William Billings)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
We Three Kings (Rev. John Henry Hopkins Jr.)
RCA 6429 – 2 – RG (CD: A Festival of Carols)
(Arrangers – Robert Shaw/Alice Parker)
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