Music Director and Conductor

Maestro Robert Ashens is Artistic Director / co-founder of West Coast Opera (Opera Oregon), Music Director/Conductor of The Shedd Theatricals, former General and Artistic Director of Anchorage Opera, and former Artistic Director of both Eugene Opera and Opera San Luis Obispo. With Margaret Rossi von Riedkirch, he is co-founder of Johann Strauss Society of America and the Wranitzky Festival.

His distinguished career as pianist and conductor brings him to many world capitals, including London, Paris, Glasgow, Vienna, Prague, Innsbruck, Florence, Pesaro and Rimini. In Northeast USA, he toured opera programs for over 30 years, with as many as 100 performances a year. He prepared and conducted many of today’s stars who now grace the major opera houses, such as Ruth Anne Swenson, Mary Dunleavy, Nathan Gunn, Eduardo Villa, Mark Rucker and Victoria Livengood, while performing with established stars Mignon Dunn, Paul Plishka, Louis Otey, Marcello Giordani, Lucine Amara, James King, Richard Fredricks, Rosalind Elias, Placido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti; he has worked with such pedagogues as Margaret Harshaw and cellist, Raya Garbousova.

Outside of the Opera realm, he accompanied great instrumentalists: Gervaise de Peyer, Ruggiero Ricci, Nathan Milstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Gary Karr and Scott Nickrenz. In the Broadway world, Maestro Ashens has prepared and conducted many stars of the last 20 years. The Maestro also conducts ballet and symphonic works with companies internationally. He conducted State Street Ballet’s NUTCRACKER with San Juan Symphony in Durango, CO and the Eugene Ballet for multiple seasons. In the Bay Area, he has conducted La Traviata and Il Trovatore for Virago, and Lucia Di Lammermoor and La Boheme for Island City Opera, as well as Hansel and Gretel for Golden Gate Opera, The Marriage of Figaro for Goat Hall, Carmen Fixation for Berkeley Opera (now West Edge Opera), and many concerts of complete presentations of rarely-heard operas.

Maestro Ashens toured nationally as conductor with the Broadway companies of A CHORUS LINE, JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, and SUGAR BABIES (with Mickey Rooney & Ann Miller) and has premiered many new works of both Broadway and Opera. He is a Eugene Emerald Valley Rotarian and a member of Phi Beta, and is listed in WHO’S WHO IN AMERICAN MUSIC.