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Robert Mandell is an international American conductor noted in the United Kingdom for his popular Family Concerts, Young People’s Concerts and as both a director and conductor of stage musicals. Robert Mandell was born in New York City on August 22, 1929., the youngest of four children. At the age of eight, Robert himself became a child actor (under the name Bobby Lee) working both on noted American radio shows such as “Let’s Pretend” and “Elery Queen” and on the Broadway stage listing among his credit’s the original season of “Lady in the Dark“ with Gertrude Lawrence and as Tad Lincoln in “Yours, A. Lincoln“ starring Vincent Price. He began his undergraduate music studies at The City College of New York in 1947. While at CCNY, he made his conducting debut for a production mounted by its theater department of Leonard Bernstein's first hit musical, “On The Town“. The production was well received by the NY critics, and was attended by the show’s creators, George Abbott, its stage director, writers and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, choreographer Jerome Robbins, and, notably the show's composer, Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein recommended Robert to his mentor Serge Koussevitsky for a scholarship to the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Massachussetts. With Koussevitky‘s death in 1951, Bernstein became head of conducting studies at Tanglewood. He invited Robert to study with him on scholarship for the next three summers. He further recommended Robert for a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music in New York. Robert was awarded a three year post graduate scholarship in conducting in the class of Jean Morel.

In 1955, Robert Mandell was appointed Special Music Assistant to Leonard Bernstein for a series of television specials he created for the Ford Foundation’s sponsored Arts program, "Omnibus” on the CBS Television Network. In 1956 Robert Mandell founded the Ars Nova Ensemble with whom he began to perform an annual series of concerts at Town Hall and Carnegie Hall in New York City, That same year he was appointed Music Director of the York Symphony Orchestra in York, Pennsylvania, In 1957, Leonard Bernstein, now Music Director in waiting of the NY Philharmonic, asked Robert to expand his television duties to include becoming part of the creative team for his newly planned televised Young Peoples Concerts. In 1958, Robert added two further appointments to his busy schedule, that of Music Director of the Philadelphia Little Symphony with whom he concertized both in Philadelphia and New York, and the Westchester Symphony in Westchester County, N.Y. Between 1957 and 1967 Robert Mandell was s Executive Music Director of the North Shore Music Theater in Beverly, Massachussetts. Between 1961 and 1968, Robert Mandell recorded over 50 albums in London for Readers Digest Records under a variety of “noms de baton” ranging from Eric Hammerstein, Johnny Gibbs, Ray Thomas, Juan Ramirez, Dicj Mahi, The Button-Down Brass, The Collegians as well as his own name. From 1968 Robert Mandell concentrated on a career in the United Kingdom in musical theater bringing popular classical concerts to a new audience through his “Concerts for the Family” series. In 1972 Robert Mandell became the Music Director for the Anthony Newley /Leslie Bricusse musical partnership, The Good Old Bad Old Days which ran for 309 performances at London's Prince of Wales Theatre. In 1973 Robert Mandell became Executive Music Director at the city of Leicester's newly opened Haymarket Theatre which launched a number of major international revivals of musicals such as Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat to Cameron Mackintosh’s first revival of Oliver!, before its transfer to the West End. Over this period, he designed musical entertainments for the concert hall which he titled Concerts For the Family. In 1975, Robert Mandell began what became a regular series of guest tenures with The e City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to promote a new series of Family Concerts and Young People’s concerts. After acquiring a major classical theatrical and light entertainment music library of over 1,000 orchestrations  in  1976, from the estate of  the British Composer/Arranger George Melachrino, Robert launched a national family concert program under the revived Melachrino Strings & Orchestra with whom he toured the UK until 2000. At its peak they were performing over 100 concerts and broadcasts a year, Robert Mandell has most recently completed an extended musical memoir of Leonard Bernstein entitled WEST SIDE MAESTRO. Volume 1, The Creative Spark, which was published in May 2012.