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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 acted on the stage and radio under the professional names Bobby Lee and Robert Lee ) working both on noted American radio shows such as Let’s Pretend and Ellery Queen and on the Broadway stage listing among his credits 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 Workshop of Leonard Bernstein's first hit musical, On The Town. The production was attended by the show’s creators, George Abbott, its stage director, writers and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, choreographer Jerome Robbins, and 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. Robert studied under Leonard Bernstein, who took over following Kousevitzky's death in 1951, for the next three summers. Leonard Bernstein further recommended Robert for a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music' in New York where Robert was awarded a three year post graduate scholarship in conducting under 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. His Ars Nova 1956 recording of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat, one of the earliest to employ stereo technology, has been re released after 50 years. That same year he was appointed Music Director of the York Symphony Orchestra in York, Pennsylvania, In 1957, Leonard Bernstein appointed Robert Mandell to become 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 1955 and 1967 Robert Mandell was Executive Music Director of the North Shore Music Theater in Beverly, Massachussetts. Between 1961 and 1968, Robert Mandell recorded over 50 LP discs in London for Readers Digest Records under a variety of “noms de baton” including, among others, Eric Hammerstein, Johnny Gibbs, Ray Thomas, Juan Ramirez, Pablo Mendez, Dick Mahi, The Button-Down Brass,The Romantic Saxophones and Strings, The Collegians as well as his own name.

In 1968 Robert Mandell took up residency with his family in England. He concentrated his career initially in musical theater and then on 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, 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 the Haymarket Theatre which launched a number of major international revivals of musicals such as Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat' to Cameron Mackintosh’s tour of Oliver!', prior to its London West End opening.

From 1974, he designed musical entertainments for the concert hall. In 1975, Robert Mandell began what became a regular series of guest tenures with The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to promote a new series of "Concerts for the Family" 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 Mandell launched a national family concert program conducting a reestablished Melachrino Strings & Orchestra with whom he toured the UK nationally annually until 2000. Robert Mandell has most recently completed an extended musical memoir of Leonard Bernstein entitled West Side Maestro the first volume of which was published in May 2012.

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