Arion's Music Director: Robert La Rue

Our Music Director, Robert La Rue, was First Prize Winner of the National Society of Arts and Letters Cello Competition, selected by a jury chaired by Mstislav Rostropovitch.   A former member of the New England String Quartet, he was also the cellist of the Lehner Trio.   With these and other ensembles or as recitalist, he has appeared at Alice Tully, Merkin and Weill Halls, the Miller Theater and Bargemusic in New York; at Jordan Hall and the Harvard Musical Association in Boston; on concert series at Princeton University, Bard, Bennington, Middlebury and Williams Colleges, and throughout the eastern and northwestern U.S.  Summers have taken him to the Bard Festival and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (where he has served as visiting faculty of the Yale Summer School of Music).

Internationally, he has been heard at the Evian Festival in France, at Canada's Banff Festival, on the Listasafns Sigurjons Olafssonar Concerts in Reykjavik (under the auspices of the American Embassy in Iceland and broadcast over Icelandic National Radio), on the Frideriksdal Slotskonzerter series in Denmark, and in numerous concerts in Germany, the United Kingdom and Brazil.  An enthusiastic proponent of American music, he collaborated in a notable set of performances of chamber and recital works works by Ned Rorem and Lukas Foss, with the composers at the piano, presented at Weill Hall and at the Curtis Institute of Music. He  has given the premieres of concertos, works for diverse chamber ensembles, and compositions for solo cello by young American composers too numerous to mention.

Mr. La Rue is a graduate of the Curtis Institute, the New England Conservatory (with Distinction), and the Juilliard School, and also attended Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music;  his teachers included Bernard Greenhouse, Laurence Lesser, Aldo Parisot, David Soyer, Janos Starker and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi.   In addition to playing with VC3 and the Alcott Piano Trio, he has for several years appeared with the Phoenix Chamber Players in their regular series of concerts at the Center for Jewish History's Leo Baeck Institute.   A proud member of the New York City Opera Orchestra, Robert looks forward to the company's projected rebirth in the 2015-16 season;  he also performs frequently in the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.    He has recorded for Arsis and North Branch Records, and is currently preparing a disc of works for solo cello sponsored by the American Composers Alliance, for release on their own label.  Born in Washington D.C., he grew up in the Midwest, and lives in Manhattan.