ABOUT ROBBY

New York-based Robby Meese is a conductor and arts leader dedicated to human connection through music.

 

Robby is the director of Bach Vespers New York, the longest-running continuous cantata series in the United States. Founded in 1968 at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on Central Park West, Bach Vespers is the first music series in the Western Hemisphere to present the cantatas of J.S. Bach in the proper historical context of a Lutheran service. Check out Bach Vespers' 59th season here. The season opens on Oct. 25 with the grand opening of Holy Trinity's landmark renovation project; to mark the occasion, Robby will conduct Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 5 "Reformation".

 

Robby also serves as artistic director of Orchestra Futures, an ensemble which platforms New York's extraordinary young professional musicians. The ensemble's next concert is coming up on Oct. 30 featuring the Suite from Psycho by Bernard Herrmann and Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14 (Juliet Schlefer, soprano, and Curtis Streetman, baritone). Recent recording projects include an all-Strauss program featuring the Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings and Meese's own arrangement of the Cello Sonata for cello and orchestra, supported by New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs. The album, featuring cello soloist John-Henry Crawford, is currently being edited for release. 

 

In January 2026, Robby was named artistic director of Music Before 1800, the longest running early music series in New York City. In this role, he serves as a fierce advocate for musicians and the early music scene writ large while fulfilling the organization's core mission: to platform the most outstanding international, national and local early music groups in an acoustically and aesthetically superb setting. His first season of programming, the series' 52nd, entitled La Música, showcases the early musical traditions of Italy, Spain, Latin America, and South America.

 

Robby regularly serves as cover conductor with the New York Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC. In recent engagements with the NSO, he has assisted in the production of the orchestra's new recordings of Beethoven's 6th, 7th, and 8th Symphonies as well as George Walker's Sinfonia no. 5. Robby also aided in the production of the NSO's medici.tv broadcast in November 2022, which featured Anne Akiko Meyers in the world premiere of Michael Daugherty's concerto for violin and orchestra, Blue Electra. He also regularly joins The Washington Chorus as cover conductor for their orchestral concerts at The Kennedy Center and the Strathmore Music Center. Through work as a cover conductor, Robby has been privileged to work with many luminary artists including conductors Gianandrea Noseda, Manfred Honeck, Gustavo Gimeno, Vasily Petrenko, Leonard Slatkin, Tarmo Peltokoski, and Eugene Rogers; and soloists Emanuel Ax, Yuja Wang, Víkingur Ólafsson, Denis Kozhukhin, Edgar Moreau, Camille Thomas, and Anne-Akiko Meyers. Erika Grimaldi, Rihab Chaieb, Saimir Pirgu, Marko Mimica, Elena Stikhina, Sergey Skorokhodov, Alexey Markov, Reginald Mobley, Damian Norfleet, Will Liverman, Caitlin Lynch, Antona Yost, Norman Shankle, Abraham Latner, Brandie Sutton, Rehanna Thelwell, Demetrious Sampson Jr., Kenneth Overton, Karen Slack, and Kerry Wilkerson, and Monique Holmes-Spells.