Gradients of Control | Robert Fleitz Piano Recital

The relationship between composer, performer, audience, and score is a delicate and malleable web—not only in these agents' realities, but in the perceptions that are placed on each of them by the other. These imagines versions, shaped by tradition and context, blur the boundaries between intention and interpretation. In this recital, the solo piano becomes a focal point for exploring how composers and performers negotiate control over musical materials. The scores on this program move from improvisation, to control, and back again; questioning what it means to have "freedom" in a work of composed music, and inviting the listener to examine their own role in the process of meaning- and memory-making.

The program features works by Camila Agosto, Manaka Kataoka, Linda Leimane, Rytis Mažulis, Jeffrey Mumford, Lou Sheppard, Julie Zhu and Raimonda Žiūkaitė


ABOUT THE PERFORMER

Robert Fleitz is a pianist and composer that curates artistic experience that surprise as often as dazzle. He made his "auspicious debut" (New York Concert Review) in Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall in October 2021. Known as an "innovative musical thinker" with a reputation for dynamic performances of both canonic and new repertoire, he has made appearances in 25 US states and 17 countries worldwide, including the Kyoto Music Festival; Festival Sansusī, BAM's Next Wave Festival; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Concert Hal "Latvija"; Spoleto Festival; the Irish National Concert Hall; Commute Festival Tallinn; Copenhagen's Koncertkirken; the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts; the Chelsea Music Festival; Le Poisson Rouge; the Aspen Art Museum; and a small cardboard house in a Lower East Side art gallery, among many others.

Recent honors include the 2022 John Cage Award Halberstadt, 2021 Pro Musicis International Award, Premio Rosalía de Castro at the VI Vigo International Piano Competition, the André Boucourechliev Prize in the 2020 International Piano Competition of Orléans, a 2021 Robert Turnbul Piano Foundation Musicians Grant, First Prize at the 2022 Sansusī Musical Brawl Tournament and a Chamber Music America Ensemble Forward Grant.

First taught piano at age 4 by his father, Patrick Fleitz, Robert received degrees from The Juilliard School (B.M. & M.M.) as a piano student of Hung-Kuan Chen and Julian Martin, and was one of ten graduates to receive the school's Career Advancement Grant. As a recipient of the 2021 Frank Huntington Beebe Award and a Latvian State Scholarship he continued his studies with Juris Žvikovs at the Latvian Academy of Music, where he was awarded the Young Artist of the Year Award. Robert and his father co-founded the Swan City Piano Festival, an ongoing mutlti-genre celebration of pianists and piano repertoire in his hometown of Lakeland, Florida.

Other important mentors include Hilary Easton, Lydia Artymiw, Pi-hsien Chen, Tema Blackstone, Lucy Shelton, Claire Chase, Jocelyn Lai, and Ching-Wen Hsiao. He has performed in masterclasses for Lief Ove Andsnes, Stephan Sylvestre, James Anagnoson, Peter Maté , and others. Robert is a Yamaha Artist.