Daily Sitka Sentinel

Pianist Promises Something Different in Concert

By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
    Many kids resist their parents’ desire for them to become great pianists, ducking piano lessons and regular practices.
    But it was the opposite in Robert Fleitz’ home, where his dad, Patrick, was a piano teacher.

Pianist Robert Fleitz will play at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Sitka Performing Arts Center. (Photo Provided)

    “I was really jealous of the kids taking lessons in the house with him,” Fleitz said. “I asked my parents if I could learn piano, and they finally let me.”
    That was at age 4. Now 24, Fleitz is a professional performer based in New York City. A graduate of Juilliard School master’s and undergraduate programs in piano performance, Fleitz performs new pieces, collaborates with other artists on multimedia shows and accompanies other artists as a chamber musician.
    He is the music director and pianist for the stage musical “The Last Five Years” that will be presented tonight and Saturday at Odess Theater in Allen Auditorium.
    And at 2 p.m. Sunday Fleitz will be on stage at the Sitka Performing Arts Center to play a piano concert. Both the musical and the piano concert are presented by the Sitka Fine Arts Camp.
    “He just has a great amount of fun when he plays,” said SFAC executive director Roger Schmidt. “There’s a humor, there’s a curiosity and a spirit of fun with his playing.”
    The Sunday program will feature pieces by living composers, with the exception of one by a recently deceased composer. Fleitz describes his performances as more of a storytelling experience.
    “Piano stories of rock and metal,” he said. “All of the pieces have some kind of narrative. A couple of the pieces are atmospheric, colorful sound worlds.”
    Other pieces he would describe as “intensely rhythmic, a big party,” and some are “explorations of what the piano can do.”
    “How can we take the piano and make it more than the sum of its parts?” he said.
    In one piece he goes inside the Steinway grand and plays on the strings inside; in another he plays with an electronic accompaniment track.
    “The pieces are not recognizable but they should be accessible and intriguing to anyone that may want to go,” Fleitz said. “I love the standard repertoire but I think it’s really important to hear music that’s being written now, in this kind of style. ... I’m getting to bring something new and different to the concert stage. It gives me as a performer the chance to be adventurous and exploratory. I’m always interested in how I can create a whole experience for the audience. This repertoire gives me a lot of space to do this. This program has a lot of variety and interesting twists and turns.”
    Fleitz didn’t waste his opportunity to begin his piano studies with his father while growing up in Lakeland, Fla., but it wasn’t until high school that he pictured a career in music.

    He attended the Harrison School for the Arts in Lakeland until his junior year, when his piano teacher (not his dad) encouraged him to apply for “pre-college admission” to Juilliard under a program in which he would take high school classes by correspondence during the week and study piano at the famous New York City performing arts conservatory on Saturday.
    He was accepted and moved to the Washington, D.C., area, the closest city to New York where he had family he could stay with, and commuted to New York City one day a week. He attended the Florida Virtual School to keep up with his other studies during the week. During his senior year, he was accepted into the prestigious undergraduate program at Juilliard. He earned his bachelor’s degree, and master’s in May of this year.
    Since then he has been freelancing, and playing concerts in New York and Europe, where he spent two months in France, Portugal and Latvia. After this weekend, he will return to New York, where he will work in the education department of the New York Philharmonic as a teaching artist. In addition to his freelance work he will spend one day a week working in the public schools in the boroughs of Queens and Staten Island.
    Fleitz connected with the Sitka Fine Arts Camp through fellow pianist Nick King, who told him about the opportunity for a six-week piano fellowship at the camp in 2015. He came to Sitka that summer and taught classes at middle and high school camp, and accompanied other faculty at the evening Artshares. He also was accompanist for the SFAC musicals “The Wizard of Oz” and “Beauty and the Beast.”
    His connection to the Sitka Fine Arts Camp led to collaborations in New York City with fellow SFAC faculty, including WT McRae and Julie Zhu, for the theatrical production of “Babel.” He’s working on a production with Zhu, set for December, that calls for him to play the harpsichord inside a box.
    “It’s cool how that community has come back and been a part of my life since I left,” Fleitz said.
    Fleitz said he’s looking forward to his concert on Sunday after the challenge of providing accompaniment for “Last Five Years.”
    “It’s one of the hardest musicals I’ve ever played music for,” he said. “It’s music the whole time, and it has a technically demanding score. It’s emotionally taxing because of the subject matter.”
    Tickets for the Sunday concert are $20 for adults and $15 for students.