Robert Jager
Robert Jager was born in 1939 in Binghamton, New York, and he is a graduate of The University of Michigan. For four years he served in the United States Navy as the Staff Arranger/Composer at the Armed Forces School of Music. Jager is now retired and is professor emeritus at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee.
Jager’s credits comprise over 120 published works for band, orchestra, chorus, and various chamber combinations. He has received commissions from some of the finest musical organizations in the world, including the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, the Republic of China Band Association, and all five of the Washington-based military bands: Air Force, Army, Army Field Band, Marines and Navy. In addition, he has received grants from Meet the Composer, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance Program of the American Music Center.
He has conducted and lectured throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and the Republic of China. Additionally, his music has been performed by the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, DC, the Nashville (Tennessee) Symphony, the Charlotte (North Carolina) Symphony, and the Omsk Philharmonic in Russia.
Jager has received many honors for his compositions; most notably, he is the only three-time winner of the American Bandmasters Association’s “Ostwald Award.” In addition, he has twice received the “Roth Award” of the National School Orchestra Association, the Kappa Kappa Psi “Distinguished Service to Music Medal” in the area of composition, and, in 2000, his Dialogues for Two Pianos won the keyboard category of the Delius Competition sponsored by the Delius Association of Florida and Jacksonville University. In 1996, he received the “Individual Artist Fellowship in Composition” from the Tennessee Arts Commission, and in 1998, was selected to receive Tennessee Tech University’s highest faculty award, the “Caplenor Faculty Research Award.” He is the first faculty member in the arts to receive this award.
He is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the American Bandmasters Association, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, Kappa Kappa Psi, Phi Kappa Phi, and an honorary member of the Women’s Band Directors Association.
