Kevin Robert Orr

“Within four bars, I recognize that a formidable, seasoned artist is at work…”—Gramophone

“First-rate playing, expressive and assured.” —American Record Guide

“Exciting, personal, always meaningful…” —Nordbayerischer Kurier (Germany)

“Dignity and a sense of scale…a developing sense of narrative…” —Piano Professional (UK)

Concert pianist and director of the School of Music at the University of Florida, Kevin Robert Orr has been engaged as performer, clinician, lecturer, and adjudicator at major music institutions across North America, Europe, East Asia, and Australia.

As director of the School of Music at UF, Orr oversees a diverse program of 450 music majors, residential and online, undergraduate through doctorate, and fifty-five faculty and staff members. He is charged with cultivating a consensus vision and appropriating resources for all aspects of the program, including faculty and staff recruitment and professional development, student recruitment and research, curriculum, facilities and infrastructure, and the program’s broad scholarly and creative research agenda. Among notable achievements as director, Orr has overseen the creation of new undergraduate and graduate degree programs, appointed thirty-seven full-time faculty and staff members, and has been instrumental in fundraising, establishing several new scholarship endowments and achieving thus far over 94% of funding for a $65 million music building campaign. Total School of Music fundraising during Orr’s leadership exceeds $72 million.

Orr’s commercial recordings, which include the complete Piano Sonatas and Ballades of Johannes Brahms and the Piano Concerto and solo works of Samuel Barber, have garnered praise from the major music periodicals of North America and Europe. Orr’s advocacy of new music has fostered numerous premieres and recordings of the works of present-day composers. Performances of both new and standard classical repertoire have been heard on Public Radio throughout the United States and on BBC London. A University of Florida Research Foundation Professor, Orr is the founding director of The University of Florida International Piano Festival, an annual summer event assembling gifted young pianists and distinguished pedagogues.

Dr. Orr studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music at Case Western Reserve University where he was the recipient of the William Kurzban Prize in Piano, and at The Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University where he received the Aurora Ragiani Martin Piano Award. Teachers have included Paul Schenly, Robert Elliot Hopkins, Caroline Oltmanns, Melva Huebert, and Doris Arnold-Cunningham. With graduate degrees in performance, Dr. Orr also holds an undergraduate degree in Music Education.

A Steinway Artist, Kevin Robert Orr records for Meyer Media, LLC. His recordings are available at Meyer-Media.com, and through iTunes, Amazon and Spotify.