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Honoring Robert Cole
The performing arts world has lost one of its great champions. Robert Cole, who served as Director of Cal Performances from 1986 to 2009, was a singular force in American arts presenting—a conductor and musician by training who brought a performer’s instinct and an institution-builder’s vision to everything he touched. For decades, he shaped not only what happened on Cal Performances’ stages, but how an entire region came to understand and experience the transformative power of live performance. His passing leaves a profound absence, and an equally profound legacy.
Cole arrived at Cal Performances in 1986, inheriting a respected regional organization that presented roughly 45 events each year on a relatively modest budget. What he built over the next 23 years was something altogether different: an internationally acclaimed presenting and commissioning organization that came to stand alongside the greatest performing arts centers and festivals in the world and directly helped to shape the performing arts ecosystem. By the time he stepped down at the close of the 2008–09 season, Cal Performances was presenting some 130 performances annually, with a budget that had more than tripled and ticket sales that had grown more than ten-fold since he took the helm.
