Ensemble CONCEPT/21 is pleased to announce that Maestra Casey Robards has been appointed as the Artistic Director of Ensemble CONCEPT/21. As the ensemble embarks on its 10th season, With her successful career and expertise in conducting and performing new music, Maestra Robards’s leadership will take the ensemble to its next chapter. Her creativity and dynamism will spearhead EC/21 into a successful next 10 years.
The mission of Ensemble CONCEPT/21 is to produce professional concerts presenting inclusive programming, to educate wider audiences on most recent art music, and to provide a platform for young composers of diverse backgrounds to develop their individual voices. Dr. Robards brings immense energy to this mission as the ensemble becomes the incubator for new music of the next generation of Northern Indiana composers.
Stay tuned for an announcement of our 2023-2024 celebratory season later this summer!
New Artistic Director of Ensemble CONCEPT/21
Korean American adoptee, Casey Robards is a music director, pianist and vocal coach known for her sensitive musicality, expert collaborative skill, stylistic versatility and operatic conducting. She has given recitals throughout the United States, Europe, Central and South America and Asia.
Robards’ emerging career as a conductor includes guest conducting Three Decembers and The Gift with South Bend Lyric Opera, Carmen with MOSI (Music On Site, Inc.) and Die Zauberflöte, La Traviata, La Bohéme, Schicchi/Suor as Main Stage conductor at the Bay View Music Festival. In 2023 she was appointed music director of Ensemble Concept 21, a Midwest chamber group that promotes new works by emerging and established composers. She was music director for Derek McPhatter’s Water Riot in Beta, a work that draws on the under-acknowledged legacy of Black voices in Punk, Electronic, and experimental contemporary music production to highlight climate anxiety and eco-grief. Robards was associate music director of the world premiere of “BOUNCE: The Basketball opera” co-produced with Ardea Arts and University of Kentucky. At the University of Illinois, she has conducted student performances of Lucia di Lammermoor and premieres of operatic works by Jiwon Hahn/Jolie O’Dell and Caleb Liddell.
Robards’ 2021-23 recitals include duo performances with Ollie Watts Davis, LaToya Lain, Karen Slack, Charis Peden, Courtney Huffman, Kenneth Overton, Brian Downen, Salley Koo and Bernhard Scully as well as work with the National Chorale and American Spiritual Ensemble. She currently tours with singer LaToya Lain in a “Narrative of a Slave Woman,” a dramatic and moving lecture-recital formatted program of Negro spirituals and Ollie Watts Davis in an art song recital “Toward Justice and Shared Humanity: Art Song of Black Composer as Lens, Language, Vision and Hope.” Robards made her Carnegie Hall debut in November 2017 with baritone Christiaan Smith in a program singing popular Top 40 songs as art song. Robards created a “Shakespeare Cabaret,” an interdisciplinary theatrical project featuring contemporary art song by Glen Roven. She was pianist/coach for the premiere workshop and production of This Little Light of Mine, an opera based on the life of Fannie Lou Hamer, with Santa Fe and Kentucky Opera.
Robards has special interest in piano and vocal music by Black composers, having experience in Black sacred music genres. She is the foremost expert on the life and music of John D. Carter (1932-1981). Dr. Robards wrote a chapter on collaborative piano for “So You Want to Sing Spirituals” published by Rowman & Littlefield. Interested in the intersection of music and social justice, Robards has created benefit recitals for MUSICAMBIA, a non-profit organization that creates music conservatories in prisons.
Currently on the faculty of the University of Illinois, previous appointments include vocal coaching and collaborative piano at Indiana University, Oberlin Conservatory (postdoc) and Central Michigan University. She has been on the faculty of the Bay View Music Festival since 2008.
Robards was pianist on three recent CD releases celebrating ecomusicology, new music, and diverse styles: “Botanica: music for oboe and English horn” with Sara Fraker (MSR Classics), “Chinese Fantasies” with violinist Fangye Sun (Blue Griffin) and “Figments Vol 3” (Navona Records) with John Dee, oboe and Bernhard Scully, horn.
Robards received the Henri Kohn Memorial Award for outstanding achievement at Tanglewood Music Festival. As a pianist/coach, Robards was a NATS Professional Intern, a Songfest Professional Development Program Participant and as a conductor, a participant in the Banff Opera in the 21st Century program. Professional memberships include IKCAS (International Keyboard Collaborative Arts Society), NATS, Maestra, MUSE, Deus Ex Musica, and the National Opera Association (Chair of the Sacred in Opera Initiative).
The 2022-2023 season of Ensemble CONCEPT/21 was made possible in part by the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County, the Indiana Arts Commission, which receives support from the State of Indiana and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Florence V. Carroll Charitable Trust.
