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Conductor Robert W. Butts has entertained and thrilled audiences through his passionate conducting and performing.  He currently serves as Music Director/Conductor of The Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey and New Jersey Concert Opera.   In the past, he has served as conductor of The Little Opera Company of New Jersey, Garden State Sinfonia, Lakeland Youth Symphony Senior Orchestra and Skylands Youth Symphony.  In New Jersey, he has conducted performances featuring The New Jersey Symphony, Society of Musical Arts Orchestra, The Plainfield Symphony, Harmonium Choral Society, the Oratorio Singers and the Masterwork Chorus.    Mr. Butts has been a regular guest conductor with orchestras and opera companies in Russia, Romania and the Czech Republic. 

In October, 2006, Mr. Butts conducted New Jersey's first complete performance of Richard Wagner's Die Valkyrie with New Jersey Concert Opera in Plainfield.   The performance was reviewed by Peter Stevens in Classical New Jersey Journal and in Wagner Notes: Newsletter of the Wagner Society of New York where Lisa Young wrote: "Under the luminous baton of Maestro Robert Butts…brought forth a beautifully nuanced performance from his musicians.”  He continued to develop a Wagner tradition on October 13, 2007 with a performance of Das Rheingold in Montclair.

In November, 2005, Mr. Butts conducted the musicians of the New Jersey Symphony in a special concert of Beethovon's Symphony #9 at the Nous Theatre in Blairstown, New Jersey.   In January, 2006, he led the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia in a reading of Anton Bruckner's Symphony #6.  During the summer of 2005, he worked with the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic in Zlin, Czech Republic.

With the Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey, Mr. Butts has primarily performed the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  In 1998, he inaugurated the annual VivaldiFest featuring chamber and orchestral works by Vivaldi and his Venetian contemporaries.  Since 2006, he has served as Artistic Director and Conductor for the annual Summer Festival of Baroque Music in Madison, New Jersey.   In 1999, 2001 and 2007, he led the orchestra in performances at the Boston Early Music Festival.   He has served as Artistic Director and Conductor for the orchestra in developing a five-concert season featuring rarely heard masterpieces and period favorites by composers ranging from Bach, Handel and Vivaldi to Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.  Following the orchestra’s relocation to Grace Church in Madison, the repertoire was expanded to include challenging works of Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Poulenc, Strauss and Shostakovich.    He has also expanded the orchestra’s schedule in performances across the state, including acclaimed concerts in Blairstown, Short Hills, Westfield and Bridgewater.

Maestro Butts made his operatic conducting debut with the Little Opera Company of New Jersey with performances of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro featuring international film and stage star Celeste Holm and Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore featuring Jerome Hines.  During his 6 years with the company, Maestro Butts conducted over 25 performances of 15 operas.  He currently serves as Music Director and Conductor with New Jersey Concert Opera, with whom he has led critically acclaimed performances of such familiar operas as Bizet's Carmen, Verdi's Rigoletto, Strauss's Die Fledermaus, Puccini's Suor Angelica and Tosca, Mozart's The Magic Flute and Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance and HMS Pinafore as well as less frequently heard masterpieces as Weber's Der Freuschütz, and Purcell's The Fairy Queen and has initiated New Jersey's first tradition for performing the operas of Richard Wagner.    He has also conducted with Opera Constanta, Romania.      At the Union County Arts Center, he conducted his first Broadway score, a gripping performance of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.   With the Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey, he has conducted operas in concert and semi-staged productions by Purcell, Pergolesi, Mozart and Handel.

 To contact Maestro Butts, email: Boblute@aol.com

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