Robert Black

Robert Black died of melanoma in Palo Alto, California, on November 14, 1993, aged 43, survived by his wife, parents and two siblings.

He founded the New York New Music Ensemble in 1975, was a member of Speculum Musicae from 1978, and founded the Prism Chamber Orchestra in 1983. He was music director of the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra from 1987 to 1993. In 1992 he was appointed Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra in Kuopio, Finland. Other orchestras he conducted or recorded with included the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Silesian Philharmonic.

Robert Carlisle Black (April 28, 1950 – November 14, 1993) was an American conductor, pianist and composer. He was most particularly associated with the promotion, performance and recording of contemporary classical music, but he also played and conducted the standard repertoire.

Robert Black was born in Dallas, Texas in 1950. The pianist William Black (1952–2003) was his brother. He started his piano studies at age 5, presenting his first public recital at 13. He studied at Oberlin College and the Juilliard School in New York, where his teachers included Beveridge Webster, Roger Sessions and David Diamond. He taught at Oberlin, Stanford University, Long Island University (C. W. Post Campus), Princeton University and the University of California, Santa Barbara.