Member Profile: Robert Fleisher
Composer
Short Bio
Robert Fleisher attended the High School of Music and Art (NYC), graduated with honors from the University of Colorado, and earned his M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in Composition at the University of Illinois. Author of Twenty Israeli Composers (1997), Dr. Fleisher is also a contributing composer and essayist in Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21 (2009). He is Professor Emeritus at Northern Illinois University. Fleisher’s acoustic music has been described as “eloquent” (Ann Arbor News), “lovely and emotional” (Toronto Musicworks), “astoundingly attractive” (Perspectives of New Music), and “ingenious” (The Strad)—his fixed media composition Loretto Alfresco (SEAMUS 2012 Electroacoustic Miniatures collection, “Re-Caged”) as “rich, tactile” and “endearingly low-tech” (New York Times). Fleisher's works are regularly performed in the U.S. and have been heard in more than a dozen other countries, most recently in Greece, Russia, Switzerland, and the U.K. His solo malletKAT composition, Maniondala (performed by Gregory Beyer), was included in the 2017 University of Illinois Percussion Ensemble CD (Albany), "Long Roll: A Tribute to Composer-Percussionist Michael Manion," appreciatively reviewed in Percussive Notes and Pan Pipes. In 2018, Maniondala was performed by Ethan Martin on the opening concert of Electronic Music Midwest, and Fleisher's Dans le Piano (fixed media) was heard during the NYCEMF. Additional works may be heard on Capstone, Centaur, Navona, PnOVA, and Sarton.