Rob Kapilow

For over 30 years, Rob Kapilow has brought the joy and wonder of music – and unraveled some of its mysteries – to audiences of all ages and backgrounds. Characterized by his unique ability to create an “aha” moment for his audiences and collaborators, whatever their level of musical sophistication or naiveté, Kapilow’s work brings music into people’s lives: opening new ears to musical experiences and helping people to listen actively rather than just hear.

Kapilow’s range of activities is astonishingly broad, including his What Makes It Great?® presentations (now for over 20 seasons in New York and Boston), his family compositions and Family Musik® events, his Citypieces, corporate programs, and residencies with institutions as diverse as the National Gallery of Canada and Stanford University. The reach of his interactive events and activities is wide, from Native American tribal communities in Montana and inner-city high school students in Louisiana to audiences in Kyoto, Istanbul, and Kuala Lumpur, and from tots barely out of diapers to musicologists in Ivy League programs.

During the 2024/2025 season he returned to the Celebrity Series of Boston, Stanford Live!, Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, and Merkin Concert Hall at the Kaufman Music Center and launches a new What Makes It Great?® series with Music Toronto.  New WMIG programs this season include Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker and a program on Ella Fitzgerald & Oscar Peterson called Anything But Standard.

Mr. Kapilow’s large-scale choral/orchestral composition, We Came to America, based on inter-generational immigrant stories had its world premiere in January 2024 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the Thurnauer School of Music of the Kaplan JCC of the Palisades and the New Jersey Symphony.

Kapilow is an award-winning author of three books. All You Have To Do Is Listen, published by Wiley/Lincoln Center won the PSP Prose Award for Best Book in Music and the Performing Arts. What Makes it Great?, also published by Wiley/Lincoln Center, was the first book of its kind to be specially designed for the iPad with embedded musical examples. His latest book, Listening for America: Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim, published by Norton/Liveright received wide critical acclaim and was a finalist for the Marfield Prize. In June 2020, he signed a new, two-book contract with Norton/Liveright, and he is currently hard at work researching and writing both books, the first on the music of the Woodstock Generation.

Kapilow has appeared on NBC’s Today Show with Katie Couric; he presented a special What Makes It Great?® for broadcast on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center; and he was the subject of a full-length PBS documentary as a composer entitled Summer Sun, Winter Moon. His What Makes it Great radio series was broadcast for more than a decade on NPR’s Performance Today.

Rob Kapilow dedicates his summer months to writing and composing new music. He was the first composer to be granted the rights to set Dr. Seuss’ words to music, and his Green Eggs and Ham has been called “the most successful piece written for families this half-century.” A CD featuring Nathan Gunn and Isabel Leonard in two more of his popular Family Musik® compositions, Chris van Allsburg’s Polar Express and Dr. Seuss’s Gertrude McFuzz, was released in 2014, and his work composed for the 25th anniversary of Ottawa Chamberfest based on Louise Bourgeois’ spider sculpture, “Maman.” received its premiere in August of 2019.

Kapilow’s career has been marked by numerous major awards and grants. He won First Place in the Fontainebleau Casadesus Piano Competition and was the second-place winner of the Antal Dorati Conductor’s Competition with the Detroit Symphony. He was featured on Chicago Public Radio’s Composers In America series and is a recipient of an Exxon Meet-the-Composer grant and numerous ASCAP awards.

Kapilow has conducted many of North America’s major orchestras, as well as new works of musical theater, ranging from the Tony Award-winning Nine on Broadway to the premiere of Frida for the opening of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and premieres of works for the American Repertory Theater. At the age of 19, Kapilow interrupted his academic work at Yale University to study with the legendary Nadia Boulanger. Two years later, after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, he continued his studies at Eastman School of Music. After graduating from Eastman, he returned to Yale, where he was an assistant professor and conductor of the Yale Symphony Orchestra for six years. He lives in Montvale, NJ, and he is a Sensei and third-degree black belt in Shorin-Ryu Karate.