Robert Preston (5)

Robert Preston had a significant career as a prize-winning concert pianist, having performed for over twenty-five years throughout Europe, South America, and in every major city of the United States including Carnegie and Avery Fisher Halls in NYC. His accolades include the Gold Medal of the International Busoni Competition, the International JS Bach Competition, the Concert Artists Guild Award, the Juilliard Concerto Competition and a Rockefeller Foundation Grant. As an Associate Professor of Music for ten years at the University of Bridgeport (CT), and holder of the Halsey Endowed Chair, he created “Chamber Music at UB”, the concert series praised by The New York Times as the finest of its kind in Fairfield County. In this role he was the host performer with dozens of well-known artists including the Cleveland String Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, Richard Stoltzman, Erick Friedman, Ida and Ani Kavafian, Sharon Robinson and Jaime Laredo. Throughout his youth, he was drawn to the camera and the visual arts. His musical career and recordings eventually came to the attention of renowned photographers Ansel Adams and Paul Caponigro, both of whom pursued serious piano study before devoting their lives to photography. Given their mutual interests and admiration, close friendships developed which fueled Robert’s lifelong passion for photography. Through these alliances he was able to expand his vision and refine his craft. While he often played concerts at Adams’ home in California, he also worked as a darkroom assistant and piano teacher to Paul Caponigro over three decades. He thus belongs to a long history of visual artists who had prior musical careers. Robert’s hand-printed archival images have been exhibited widely (i.e. the Milton Weill Gallery, NYC; the Photographer’s Gallery, Sonoma CA; the Russeck Gallery, NYC; the Red Sky Gallery, Charlotte NC; and at Rockwell Art, Westport CT). They have also appeared in important publications such as Glamour, Vogue, Musical America, Family Travel, Simon & Schuster Books and The New York Times. During the past ten years, he has also done the billboard photography for dozens of his musician friends at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. While he simply regards the camera as his “other” instrument, his photographs reveal the rhythm and poetry of the music which still lives within him.