robert cart, flute

Flutist, Robert Cart, was born to a farm family in southern Indiana and always sought a better life, which he found in what was perhaps the least likely place in the world: New Jersey. As a child he knew he wanted more, and at the age of five discovered his musical spark when playing around on an old, out-of-tune upright piano in the back hallway of his grandmother’s home.  His parents recognized his talent and sent him for piano lessons with the local ragtime pianist, Thelma Henry who is heard here playing Down Yonder.  Mrs. Henry and Robert’s fifth grade band director, Mark Johnson, instilled in him an untamable joy for musical expression that persisted as a strong and completely incurable lifelong addiction to music. While his addiction may have begun at the age of five with piano, by fifth grade he was a clarinetist, by eighth grade a flutist, and by eleventh grade a bassoonist. Every day, Robert sang for his most captivated and appreciative audience, a herd of about 100 Polled Hereford cattle.  So, it was only natural that by the time he completed a Bachelor of Music in performance at DePauw University and reached graduate school at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, he was studying the leading tenor roles of Puccini, Verdi, and Wagner with the great soprano Klara Barlow and taking flute lessons with London Symphony Orchestra’s principal flutist Peter Lloyd, while pursuing a Master of Music degree in performance. In 2001, he somehow found himself completing his Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Maryland College Park.

Already far from being on the southern Indiana farm, Robert performed with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood, David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and Raymond Leppard and the Indianapolis Symphony. At the age of 28, excited for his first trip abroad, he expedited the processing of his first passport, flew to London’s Gatwick Airport on Easter Sunday, took the train from Victoria Station to Ipswich, and then traveled by bus to Aldeburgh, where he performed at the Britten-Pears Festival.

In 2010, Robert began flute studies with Gary Schocker and a lifelong collaboration with pianist, Regina DiMedio Marrazza.  In short time, Robert made his solo flute debut at Carnegie Hall, became a Powell Flutes Artist, a Universal Edition composer and arranger of flute music, and a recording artist on solo flute albums for Albany and Centaur Records. He made his solo flute debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, performed solo recitals at the Philips Collection, Alice Tully Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and the Whitehouse. He played at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and at one point even performed Borne’s Carmen Fantasy simultaneously as flute and tenor soloist with an orchestra of 125 players to a packed audience in Shanghai, China.

Though inspired by Mozart, Beethoven, Prokofiev, and the great French flute composers, Robert has realized the importance of contemporary composers and their works to the future of Western art music: in fact, all composers were modern at some point in history. So, he has commissioned and premiered new works by Jennifer Higdon (Nocturne for flute and piano), Gary Schocker (Always and Forever, Headstand/Cartwheels and Three’s Company), and Roger Hudson (The Witty Sayings of Yogi Berra), in addition to performing over 40 world premieres of chamber and orchestral works and recording works by Daniel Dorff, David Loeb, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson for the first time. Continually striving for a more exuberant musical experience and ever seeking to surround himself with great music and great musicians, Robert continues his lifelong addiction to music as flutist with Philadelphia’s Network for New Music, and as a faculty member at the Atlantic Music Festival where he is flutist and coordinator for the Contemporary Music Ensemble. He is also founding flutist of both PhillyQ, a Philadelphia-based woodwind quartet, and the Fischbach, Merlino, & Cart Trio, a flute, viola, and cello chamber ensemble.

At the age of twenty-five, Robert met his life-long partner and eventual husband Russell, the most creative computer scientist, author, father, homeschool teacher, and husband you’ll ever meet.  They adopted a beautiful baby boy, Vincent, from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and together they (but mostly Russell) nurtured Vincent’s passion for music and violin playing, sending him off to study music at a conservatory with world-renowned violinist Elmar Oliveira. They have always maintained a robust family of loving pets that has included, but never all at once, the cats Elsa, Fatty Acids, Moses, and Ralph, and the dogs Bill, Desi, Mattie, Rothko, and Taffy. There may have been some goldfish along the way, too.

Robert loves vintage musical instruments for their rich history and colorful tone.  He primarily plays a vintage Powell flute made in 1938 by Verne Q. Powell for Philadelphia Orchestra flutist William Kincaid and a vintage 1972 custom made grenadilla Powell piccolo. But, he also owns a slew of custom Haynes flutes dating from the 1940’s and the 1960’s.  When he’s not too frustrated by the open G#, Robert also enjoys playing his Rudall, Carte & Co. piccolo made in 1927 by Mr. Atkins for Mr. L.J. Ford of Nottingham. And, yes.  There is a distant ancestral relationship to Richard Carte (originally without the e) of Rudall, Carte & Co. Flutes and his son Richard D’Oyly Carte of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in London.

Robert is a Powell Flutes Artist.