Robert Porco
Director of Choruses
Frances P. and Chester C. Bolton Endowed Chair
The Cleveland Orchestra
Robert Porco became director of choruses for The Cleveland Orchestra in 1998. In addition to overseeing choral activities and preparing the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and the Blossom Festival Chorus for a variety of concert programs each season, Mr. Porco conducts the Orchestra’s annual series of Christmas concerts at Severance Hall and regularly conducts subscription concert programs both at Severance Hall and at the Blossom Festival.
During the 2011-12 Severance Hall season, Mr. Porco is preparing the choruses for performances of works including Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Stravinsky's Mass and Symphony of Psalms, Mozart's Mass in C minor, and pieces by Schubert. In addition, he leads performances of Verdi's Requiem with the Orchestra and Chorus at the close of the season.
Mr. Porco was recently honored by Chorus America with its annual Michael Korn Founders Award for a lifetime of significant contributions to the professional choral art. Throughout his career, Mr. Porco has been active as a conductor of opera and of choral-and-orchestral works. He is a regular guest conductor and the director of choruses for the Cincinnati May Festival, and has guest-conducted the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and other orchestras in the United States and Europe. Mr. Porco has prepared choruses for such prominent conductors as Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Andrew Davis, Christoph von Dohnányi, Paavo Järvi, Erich Kunzel, Raymond Leppard, James Levine, Jesús López-Cobos, Zubin Mehta, André Previn, Kurt Sanderling, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin, and Franz Welser-Möst.
Highlights of Mr. Porco’s Cleveland tenure in recent seasons have included preparing the Chorus for a February 2009 Carnegie Hall performance of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass and Debussy’s Nocturnes and for its May 2009 debut in the Cincinnati May Festival, performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (“Symphony of a Thousand”). He prepared the Chorus for April 2008 performances of Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony, which he conducted, and January 2007 performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 that were conducted by Franz Welser-Möst and recorded live and released on compact disc by Deutsche Grammophon.
During the 2005 season, Mr. Porco prepared the Chorus for appearances with the Orchestra in the Lucerne and the Proms Festivals. Ohio native Robert Porco served as chairman of the choral department at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music (1980-98), and currently teaches doctoral-level conducting at the school. He has directed the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus since 1989 and was artistic director and conductor of the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir (1989-98).
Updated: September 2011
