Robert Cart

Flutist, Robert Cart, was born to a poor farm family in southern Indiana in 1964 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. 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, while pursuing a Master of Music degree in voice performance and also taking flute lessons with London Symphony Orchestra’s principal flutist Peter Lloyd. 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. Eventually, Robert became a university professor, department chair, music school director, and college dean. Playing the flute, however, was his most genuine passion. And, though he had upheld a small career as an operatic tenor for more than two decades, he decided to change the course of his musical life at the age of 47 by returning to the flute full time. So, he dusted off his chops and began a decade of 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, 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.