About
Maestra Casey Robards (Suh Jung Ahn) is a conductor and music director whose work has been seen throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Central America, South America, and Asia. Robards has worked with a broad range of opera companies, festivals, and producing organizations, including Santa Fe Opera, Kentucky Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Indianapolis Opera, New Orleans Opera, Opera Columbus, Soo Opera, El Paso Opera, South Bend Lyric Opera, and the Bay View Music Festival, where she worked for seventeen seasons.
Known for her collaborative leadership, stylistic range, and intimate understanding of both singers and instrumentalists, Maestra Robards’ recent and upcoming repertoire includes productions of Le nozze di Figaro, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Pagliacci, Lucia di Lammermoor, Carmen, La traviata, La bohème, Die Zauberflöte, Gianni Schicchi, Suor Angelica, Susannah, Three Decembers, Little Women, Bon Appétit, and the Afro-surrealist rock opera Water Riot in Beta, in addition to numerous other contemporary and newly composed works.
Robards is keenly interested in the decolonization of the self as it relates to identity as well as being a classically trained musician. As a Korean American adoptee, her experience of being "in-between" informs her artistic practice and interests.
In parallel with her work as a conductor, producer, and artistic director, Robards is an accomplished pianist and vocal coach.
Recent albums include “What Dreams We Have” with Kenneth Overton (Lexicon Classics) and “Contemplations” with Bernhard Scully (Navona Records). She is currently working on multiple recording projects in opera, chamber music, and art song for release in 2027.
Robards' most recent curation was a collaboration with soprano Jennifer Lien for the recital program "mOthertongue: Lived Experiences in Asian America," bringing together visual artist, Myung-Sun Kim; scholar/author, Sarah Park Dahlen; and poet, Ophelia Hu Kinney in a multi-media experience "Rituals for Belonging" featuring song cycles Lien commissioned by Justine Chen, Melissa Dunphy, and Kamala Sankaram.
Widely recognized for her deep engagement with the piano and vocal music of Black composers, with particular emphasis on negro spirituals and Black music traditions, Robards' partnership in this repertoire—grounded in historical knowledge, stylistic integrity, and close collaboration with singers—has shaped nationally presented projects including Narrative of a Slave Woman, Songs of Love and Justice, and Toward Justice and Shared Humanity. She has collaborated with artists such as LaToya Lain, Kenneth Overton, Karen Slack, Ollie Watts Davis, Darryl Taylor and Angelique Clay, in recitals, recordings, and curated concert programs presented throughout the United States and internationally. Her dissertation is on the life and music of John D. Carter (1932-1981).
Dr. Robards currently serves as Asst. Prof. of Lyric Theatre at the University of Illinois.
Projects
Art Song
mOthertongue: Lived Experience in Asian America
Featuring 3 song cycles:
Melissa Dunphy: Chinoiserie (2024, text by/compiled by Melissa Dunphy)
Kamala Sankaram: The Goddess Gets Dressed (2024, text by Kamala Sankaram)
Justine F. Chen: ALIGHT (2024; text by Ophelia Hu Kinney)
Exotic landscapes. Virtuous, submissive, sexualized women. Ineffective, emasculated, villainous men. These images of Asia have long been a staple of the European imagination, whether in colonial-era art song, grand Italian opera, film, or television. Here, in the 21st century, these stereotypes about Americans of Asian descent persist (see: pandemic-era anti-Asian hate). We believe that one way to challenge outdated cultural ideas is by sharing new art with fresh cultural ideas. I wanted to perform songs that assert the Asian American lived experience, from the perspective of those of us who live it.
These songs express the joys, pains, contradictions, and pride we experience as Asians living in this land we call home. Recurring themes that resonate across the three song cycles include: colonization; cultural shame; living in between cultures; culture loss; microaggression; pride. To sing these truths is to find and reclaim power that has been lost somewhere along the way. Our wish for this project is that these songs feed the hunger of singers for repertoire that expresses their lived experience and inspire marginalized composers to create works that assert their truths, take up space, and shift the cultural needle in the right direction. Our stories are all American stories. - Jennifer Lien
American Spirituals: History, Impact and Performance
Robards has shared the stage with many acclaimed interpreters and cultural ambassadors of spirituals and art song by Black Americans including LaToya Lain, Kenneth Overton, Karen Slack, Angelique Clay, John Wesley Wright, Darryl Taylor, Henry Pleas, Richard Todd Payne, and Everett McCorvey, founder of the American Spiritual Ensemble.
Robards is a frequent collaborator with LaToya Lain in her dramatic storytelling recital of spirituals "Narrative of a Slave Woman," which they have performed worldwide.
Robards co-directed the American Negro Spiritual Intensive program with Dr. McCorvey at the Bay View Music Festival. Robards, Dr. Everett McCorvey and Kenneth Overton have given residency workshops for colleges and universities wishing to explore the American Negro Spiritual through individual and group coaching, culminating in public performance. For booking queries for recitals or residencies, please contact Casey Robards.
What Dreams We Have: The Poetry and Music of Paul Laurence Dunbar
What Dreams We Have: The Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar is a Overton's latest album on Lexicon Classics. With pianist Casey Robards, the album features 21 songs by 8 different composers which are centered around the world premiere of a new song cycle written by Anthony J. Patterson. With a combination of veteran composers Hailstork, Adams and Price, new composers like Jeremiah Evans and Walker Jermaine Jackson, and rediscovered gems of Lena McLin and Irene Britton Smith, we embarked on an inspirational journey through Dunbar’s lyric and poetic voice.
Contemplations
Contemplations: Music for Horn and Piano by Douglas Hill
Douglas Hill composer
Bernhard Scully horn
Casey Robards piano
Douglas Hill percussion & narration
CONTEMPLATIONS is a striking exploration of the horn’s expressive potential, spanning jazz, classical, and indigenous inspirations. From the lyrical Six (Recycled) Melodies to the Jazz Sonata for Horn and Piano, these compositions showcase the horn alone and the dynamic interplay between the horn and piano. Contemplations draws from Native American flute traditions, while Unmeasured Anecdotes embraces freeform expression. Yardbirds merges bebop and birdsong, embodying a playful, rhythmic dialogue. With its thoughtful curation and masterful performance, this Navona Records release offers a meditative yet vibrant journey through the horn’s diverse voice.
Botanica: Music for oboe and english horn
Sara Fraker oboe & English horn
Casey Robards, piano
Hugo Godron, composer
Pavel Haas, composer
Glen Roven, composer
Vladimír Soukup, composer
Asha Srinivasan, composer
Exploring intersections between the human and botanical worlds, BOTANICA is a musical entry point into current conversations around environmental and social justice. The six pieces on the album are interrelated, in varying degrees, by threads of common themes and origins: spiritual ecology, poetic text, and resistance to injustice. All are highly expressive in their compositional language. All works are world premiere recordings, with the exception of the Pavel Haas Suite, a masterpiece of the oboe repertoire just beginning to gain full recognition.
Asha Srinivasan's Braiding is a ten-minute piece for oboe, electronics and natural sounds, inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer's book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants. Elegy for Oboe and Piano, also commissioned for this album, is one of Glen Roven's final compositions before his sudden passing in the summer of 2018. It ends poignantly with an original chorale in the style of Bach, haunted by fleeting oboe embellishments. This chorale finds echoes in Pavel Haas' persistent treatment of the Wenceslas chorale, the most enduring musical symbol of Czech nationalism. It is likely that Haas originally composed the Oboe Suite for tenor voice, with an anti-fascist text so dangerously political that he ultimately decided to give the vocal line to the oboe instead. The oboe melody is often recitative-like, tones shaped around the ghostly forms of secret, vanished syllables. In the Four Songs, composed in the Terezin concentration camp, the original bass voice is re-imagined as a solo English horn line. Musically, the Suite and the Songs are inextricably linked, making this new transcription for English horn and piano a natural fit. The Oboe Sonata by Soukup, though from a later era, retains the intensity of Czech post-tonal language. Godron's whimsical Suite Bucolique finds its home here among music rich with allusions to woodland trees and bamboo forests.
Catalog #: MS1723Release Date: May 10, 2019Format: Digital
Chinese Fantasies
Fangye Sun, violin
Casey Robards, piano
Inspired by Chinese folk tunes from childhood memories, this debut recording from violinist Fangye Sun features both traditional and contemporary works. The variety and beauty of these folk tunes sketch the history, regions, landmarks, as well as the unique culture of the minority ethnic groups of China.
Gallery
Contact
For booking conducting engagements:
Marvel Arts Management
Email: James@marvelartsmanagement.com
Phone: 646-209-5200