Robert Freeman (musician)

Robert Freeman (born 1936) is an American pianist, music educator, and musicologist who is particularly known for leading some of the finest conservatories of music in the United States. From 1972-1996 he was the Dean of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, and from 1996-1999 he was President of the New England Conservatory. From 1999-2006 he held the position of Dean of the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. He currently remains at the UTA as a professor of musicology. In addition to sitting on the advisory committees and boards for several academic and performing arts institutions, Freeman is also the chair of Harvard Medical School's board of the Institute for Music and Brain Science at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Life and career

Born into a family of musicians, Freeman grew up in Needham, Massachusetts and attended school at the Milton Academy. His father was a double bass player in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In his youth he studied the oboe with Fernand Gillet in addition to studying the piano.^[1] He went on to concurrently earn a Bachelor of Music degree from Harvard University and a diploma in piano performance from the Longy School of Music in 1957. He also studied privately with Artur Balsam and Rudolf Serkin during the summers of 1955 and 1956. We went on to pursue graduate studies at Princeton University where he achieved both a MFA and PhD in musicology. A Fulbright Scholarship enabled him to pursue further studies in Vienna in 1960-1962. He was also awarded a Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation Award in 1962 and later an honorary doctorate from Hamilton College.

In 1963 Freeman joined the music faculty at Princeton University. He left there in 1968 to become an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he remained through 1973. In 1972 he was named dean of the Eastman School of Music. He remained in that position for the next 24 years. From the fall of 1996 through the spring of 1999 he served as president of the New England Conservatory, after which he became dean of the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin for seven years. He currently is the Susan Menefee Ragan Regents Professor of Fine Arts at the UTA where he teaches courses in musicology.

A a pianist, Freeman has performed in concerts and recitals throughout North America and Europe. He has also made several recordings, mainly with colleagues from Eastman and the University of Texas. As a musicologist, his publications have focused mainly on 18th-century music history. He has also written extensively on the history of music education and on the future course of music education in the United States.^[2]

References