By Susan Elliott

In the last decade, Robert Spano has done more to blast through the conventional barriers of symphonic programming than possibly any American conductor working today. An intriguing combination of nervous energy, intellectual curiosity, and bone-deep musicality, Spano has been tilling the red-clay soil of Atlanta for the past six seasons, nurturing Osvaldo Golijov's muse, catapulting lesser-known composers into the limelight, and bringing an orchestra once known as the backup band to Robert Shaw's stunning chorus to a new level of fame and fortune.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra partnership has borne tremendous fruit on recordings--over half of them repertory premieres--including eight CDs on Telarc and two on Deutsche Grammophon for the label's Golijov project. But these are by no means Spano's only calling cards. He has guested with most of the major U.S. ensembles; last summer he made his BBC Proms debut in a program of Bernstein and Gershwin. His Ring cycle with the Seattle Opera in 2005 elicited major accolades, such that he's repeating it in 2009. This season he returns to the Chicago Lyric Opera to conduct the house premiere of John Adams's Dr. Atomic and takes Ainadamar, one of his Golijov signature works, to the Barbican Centre. He also makes return visits to the major orchestras of Birmingham, Philadelphia, and the Boston Symphony, his alma mater of slightly over a decade ago.

Along the way, he plans to get back to his initial raison d'être: composing. "In the same way that I needed to go to the Boston Symphony, I needed to commit to Brooklyn, I needed to commit to Atlanta and develop the relationship that I now treasure and enjoy. I know that the next thing for my health, my evolution, is to write music again. It was my whole identity as a child."

That goes a long way to explain his self-described "obsession" with new work. Sipping lemonade one steamy summer afternoon on the terrace of an under-the-radar watering hole behind his loft in midtown Atlanta, Spano describes composer-nurturing as "the biggest joy in my life." His energy is palpable and his enthusiasm contagious: He has commissioned or co-commissioned seven works in the last five years--Jennifer Higdon's City Scape (2002), John Corigliano's Violin Concerto (2003), Christopher Theofanidis's The Here and Now (2005), David Del Tredici's Paul Revere's Ride (2005), Michael Gandolfi's The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (2007), Richard Danielpour's Pastime (2007), and John Harbison's Concerto for Double Bass (2007). Five more are on the way, for future seasons.

Amid such repertory, a luminous Telarc CD of three peaceful works by Ralph Vaughan Williams with Atlanta last year--the Tallis Fantasy, Fifth Symphony, and Serenade to Music, with the brief, choral Tallis original as an introductory track--reminds us of the conductor's wide range of affinities. Golijov, with whom Spano has been working for over a decade, calls the conductor "a shaman with a beat. Every time I give him a new piece, he understands it better than I do. Maybe it's telepathy, maybe because he's a composer too, but in the last ten years of working together, I can think of maybe one time when I've told him to go slower or faster. That's it. That's how tremendous the understanding is."

Says soprano Dawn Upshaw, another frequent collaborator: "From the first moment I met Bob--I think it was at the Tanglewood Music Festival--it was so clear that this was an extraordinarily vibrant young man who, above all else, loved and lived music with such a passion, nothing was going to get in his way of sharing that love with all those he came into contact.
 
"I think Bob is a musical 'channeler.' And the actual moment of performance? It's as if we're dancing together! I don't even sense who's 'leading,' but he's one of the best dancing partners I've ever had!"

Unlike such colleagues as James Conlon or Dennis Russell Davies, the Ohio-born Spano, 46, has managed to develop his career almost entirely Stateside. After writing 12-tone pieces in high school, he studied conducting at Oberlin with Robert Baustian and later at the Curtis Institute, under Max Rudolf. It was Rudolf who may have had the biggest impact, for when asked what makes a great conductor, Spano quotes his teacher: "The most important trait for a conductor to have is curiosity."

Spano's is insatiable.

His early career path was strictly academic: Bowling Green University, where he headed up the orchestra and opera programs; Oberlin Conservatory, as music director of the Opera Theater. (He remains on the Oberlin faculty.) His first podium job outside the academy was as assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa, a three-year assignment that started in the summer of 1991 at Tanglewood, to which he has returned every summer since in an array of guises, including head of the Conducting Institute and director of the Festival of Contemporary Music. Not bad for a guy who claims to have been rejected from the place as a student.

Spano credits Ozawa's "generous" advice with jump-starting his career. He describes preparing for what he calls "a 911"--last-minute conducting gig--in Toronto, when he was to lead Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben for the first time. Ozawa, he says, saved his skin ("He was extraordinary"). He also put Spano's keyboard facility to use for soloist rehearsals. And when the young conductor made his official podium debut on a BSO subscription concert, Ozawa was in the audience, ready to give him "notes."

"He was very perceptive," remembers Spano. "Like laser surgery."

After Boston came three years of non-stop guest conducting, and then the Brooklyn Philharmonic beckoned. With the New York critics cheering him on, Spano managed in seven seasons (1996-2003) to put the part-time BPO on the national map, largely through inventive programming: While the New York Philharmonic was plowing through another Brahms Second or Tchaikovsky Sixth, Spano and the BPO were combining Conlon Nancarrow, Toru Takemitsu, and Astor Piazzolla on one program, introducing rock singer Marianne Faithfull to Kurt Weill songs on another, and offering such themed seasons as "The Healing Power of Music," with a premiere by John Mackey at one end of the spectrum and Mozart's Così fan tutte at the other. He also presided over the world premiere of Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer, in 2003.

At the time of his arrival in Atlanta for the 2001-02 season (simultaneous with that of Donald Runnicles as principal guest conductor, a post he still holds), the orchestra was at a low ebb, having long lost the Shaw luster and spirit during Yoel Levi's 12-year reign.

Six seasons later, the ASO is a different organization--across all levels. "He seems genuinely excited about being here, about being with us," says Christopher Rex, principal cello since the Shaw days.

"I know this orchestra better than any other in the world," says Spano. "We understand each other--not just for facility and speed, but in the depth and level of communication." The honeymoon continues. Spano took the orchestra and chorus with him to the Ojai (California) Festival in 2006 and, for the third time, takes it to Carnegie Hall in the spring. "He's brought so many projects to the orchestra," continues Rex, "we feel like we're current, that the music we're making is relevant."

Which is Spano's gift--to make that connection between what he so passionately believes in, and what the rest of us need to hear.

Susan Elliott is a journalist and editor of MusicalAmerica.com.