Robert Hart Baker is in his 28th year as Music Director and Conductor of the York Symphony Orchestra. He also serves as director of the York Symphony Chorus and Chamber Singers. He is the Music Director and Conductor of the St. Louis Philharmonic and the Harrisburg Choral Society. He is principal guest conductor with the Asheville Lyric Opera Company, and is conductor laureate of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra in North Carolina.

His broad repertory of classical symphonic, opera, choral and ballet scores are complemented by his skills as a Pops conductor, and he has received critical praise on the podium here and abroad in all genres. His work on Family Concert programming with the York Symphony Association has earned two awards from the League of American Orchestras (Student Song Contest in 2003 and Saturday Morning Symphony in 2005). His DVD of the St. Louis Philharmonic Holiday Spectacular won the national Telly Award in 2004 for best classical local cable TV production. In December 2007, his holiday video with the Kirkwood Children’s Chorale was in the finals of NBC’s nationally-televised competition Clash Of The Choirs. In joint collaboration with his colleague Stephen Gunzenhauser, Robert conducted the film score for the Lancaster-York Heritage Region DVD Stories Of The Land—Along Dutch Country Roads, with the studio orchestra combining York Symphony and Lancaster Symphony musicians.
 
His tenure with his orchestras has been distinguished by collaborations with many prominent soloists, including pianists Joaquin Achucarro, Dickran Atamian, Seth Carlin, Misha Dichter, James Dick, Sergei Edelmann, Claude Frank, Adam Golka, Yuliya Gorenman, Eric Himy, Valentina Igoshina, Yakov Kazman, Leonid Kuzmin, Oleg Marshev, Anne-Marie McDermott, Christopher O’Riley, Constantine Orbelian, Thomas Pandolfi, Natasha Paremski, Alexander Peskanov, Dimitri Ratser, Avis Romm, Roman Rudnitsky, Peter Serkin, Boris Slutsky, Vladimir Stoupel, Andre Watts and Jingyi Zhang, violinists Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Pip Clarke, Pamela Frank, David Halen, Daniel Heifetz, Ilya Kaler, Stefan Milenkovich, Kurt Nikkanen, David Perry, Mark Peskanov, Anna Rabinova, Philippe Quint and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violists Paul Neubauer and Andy Simionescu, cellists Ani Aznavoorian, Zuill Bailey, Carter Brey, David Finckel, Daniel Gaisford, Richard Hirschl, Scott Kluksdahl, Janos Starker and Paul Tobias, saxophonists Paul Cohen, James Houlik and Branford Marsalis, flutists James Galway and Carol Wincenc, English hornist Thomas Stacy, clarinetists Hakan Rosengren and David Shifrin, trumpeters Stephen Burns, David Hickman and Ronald Romm, French hornist Richard Todd, percussionist Lisa Pegher, harpsichordist Gretchen Dekker, organist Johannes Somary, soprano Lindsey McKee, and mezzo-sopranos Gwendolyn Bowers and Jennifer Larmore . At the 10th anniversary concert of the Asheville Lyric Opera, he had the pleasure of conducting arias with a stellar cast of singers from the Metropolitan Opera, including soprano Angela Brown, tenor Tonio Di Paolo, and baritones David Malis and Sherrill Milnes. 

As a guest conductor he has appeared with many American orchestras, including Billings, Chattanooga, Cheyenne, Flagstaff, Harrisburg, Muskegon, Providence, Quincy (IL), Roanoke and Radio City Music Hall,  to name but a few. In May 2010 he made his debut with the Boston Pops as part of its 125th anniversary celebration, conducting “Summer” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with violin soloist Lynn Chang. His recent international guest conducting engagements have been with the Regina Symphony in Canada, Orquestra do Norte in Porto, Portugal, the State Philharmonic Orchestra in Vratza, Bulgaria, the Tito Schipa Symphony Orchestra of Lecce, Italy, and the State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra in Toluca, Mexico. He has appeared as an opera conductor with the Spoleto Festival, Brevard Music Center, Connecticut, and Cullowhee Festival opera companies. He served as an assistant conductor to Christian Badea and Gian Carlo Menotti for six summers in Italy. He has conducted the North Carolina Dance Theatre ballet company on three occasions.

Maestro Baker is committed to the training and education of young musicians. He has been a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, Mars Hill College, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and the State University of New York at Purchase. He is the former Music Director of the New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, and conductor laureate of the York (PA) Youth Symphony. He has also been a guest faculty member at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, and has taught choral and instrumental summer workshops at Penn State York. His most recent performance as a solo oboist with the York Symphony can be seen on YouTube in the Bach Concerto for Oboe and Violin with Harrisburg Symphony concertmaster Odin Rathnam. He is married to flutist Barbra Duvall Baker, with whom he maintains an active chamber music schedule. The Bakers make their home on a small farm in York, where they raise and ride Iberian horses.

An active professional oboist, he has appeared as soloist with the UNC-Asheville String Ensemble, Asheville Symphony Chamber Players and Brevard Chamber Orchestra in North Carolina, and the York Symphony and Abendmusik Chamber Orchestra in Pennsylvania. In joint recital with his wife, flutist Barbra Duvall Baker, he has appeared at the Cooperstown Music Festival and Performers of Westchester chamber series in New York, and at the Palaces of St. Petersburg Music Festival in Russia, to critical acclaim. Among his private teachers are legends of the oboe profession, including Henry Schuman, Ralph Gomberg, Robert Bloom, Ronald Roseman and Thomas Stacy. He has served as oboist with the Westchester Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, the Greenville Symphony, and the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale, where he played under conductors Aaron Copland, Sir Georg Solti, Pierre Boulez, Jussi Jalas, William Steinberg and Lorin Maazel. He holds diplomas in oboe and chamber music from the Academie Internationale d’ete in Nice, France, the summer home of the Paris Conservatory faculty.

Born in New York, Robert received his early training at the Horace Mann School and the Manhattan School of Music. Robert holds a diploma in conducting from the Mozarteum Conservatory in Salzburg, where he made his professional debut at the age of 17 as a student of Herbert von Karajan and Gustav Kuhn. He is a cum laude graduate of Harvard, where conducted the Bach Society Orchestra for two seasons, while studying conducting with Leonard Bernstein and James Yannatos.  He holds two master's degrees and a doctorate in conducting from the Yale School of Music, where he studied conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller and Arthur Weisberg. Robert was awarded an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from York College of Pennsylvania, and has received two awards from the American Society of Composers, Publishers & Authors for contemporary music programming. He has compact disc and DVD releases on several record labels, including Aurefon, Ernest Bloch Society, and Sonari.