The Frost School of Music at the University of Miami is deeply saddened to announce the unexpected passing of Professor Robert M. Carnochan, one of their most beloved and accomplished faculty members, on Sept. 18, 2024. A lifelong music educator and conductor who profoundly impacted students and colleagues at the Frost School and at institutions across the country, Carnochan dedicated his life to the art of music and mentoring generations of artists. He was 61.
Carnochan joined the Frost School in 2015, where he was Chair of Instrumental Performance, Director of Bands, and Music Director/Conductor of the Frost Wind Ensemble. In August, his faculty peers selected him for the 2024 Phillip Frost Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship, the Frost School of Music’s most prestigious award honoring him as an outstanding faculty member and leader.
“Rob Carnochan was a peerless conductor and musical artist, and an inspirational leader to every student and colleague he touched,” said Dean Shelton G. “Shelly” Berg. “We have lost a giant in the wind band world.”
Carnochan was unabashedly passionate about music education. Both his parents and several of his siblings were teachers. “You could say teaching is in my DNA,” he wrote on receiving the Excellence Award. “As a teacher, I have three priorities: 1) students, 2) students, and 3) students! Helping them find their voice and way through life, regardless of their path, has been and remains my mission. I’ve been unbelievably fortunate to have had the absolute pleasure of knowing and working with the best of the best throughout my career, and, at the end of the day, I am the beneficiary of learning from them more than I think they have learned from me.”
Among the countless students he helped is doctoral candidate Roy McLerran, who came to the Frost School to study with Carnochan. “He’s a very passionate and caring person,” McLerran said of his mentor this summer. “He cares about students and thinks of them as human beings first. You don’t find many people like that at his level.”
Carnochan began his 38-year-long career as Director of Bands at Dundalk High School in Baltimore, Maryland, a job he proudly emphasized in his bio as “near and dear to his heart.” Before joining the Frost School, he spent 13 years as Professor of Music and Director of the Longhorn Band at The University of Texas at Austin. He held similar positions at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Northeastern Oklahoma State University, and Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. He was enormously proud of his former students' achievements, devoting two single-spaced pages of his CV to listing their university or college job placements.
Carnochan divided his career between marching and wind bands, and loved them both. He had recently taken on overseeing the Frost Band of the Hour (FBOTH), the marching band for the University of Miami Hurricanes football and basketball teams. It is a measure of Carnochan’s profound legacy as a teacher that the FBOTH’s new leader, Director of Athletic Bands Dr. Craig McKenzie, had been Carnochan’s student while getting his doctorate in wind conducting at the Frost School and as an undergraduate drum major at the University of Colorado.
In June, with a joyful Facebook post, Carnochan celebrated the arrival of McKenzie and his fellow FBOTH leader, Assistant Director of Athletic Bands Dr. Sheldon A. McLean, also a Frost School doctoral graduate. “Welcome to the family!” Carnochan wrote. “I cannot wait to watch what you do with the Frost Band of the Hour in the years to come!”
Carnochan was equally passionate about wind band music and the art of conducting. He made the Frost Wind Ensemble one of the Frost School’s most dynamic and powerful groups, with 26 commissions and artist residencies under his leadership. Among the many illustrious composers Carnochan commissioned were Andy Akiho, Mason Bates, Valerie Coleman, John Corigliano, Gunther Schuller, John Mackey, Omar Thomas, Xi Wang, David Biedenbender, and Frost School doctoral student Kevin Day.
Mackey posted a tribute to Carnochan on Wednesday. “I just learned of the sudden passing of Robert Carnochan and I am at a loss for words,” Mackey wrote in the classical music site Slipped Disc. “Rob was brilliant and warm and funny and kind. My thoughts are with his family and his thousands of friends and current and former students. You’re loved, Rob.”
Carnochan was an active guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator throughout the United States, and conducted concerts in Europe and Asia. He produced or conducted numerous recordings and received multiple service and teaching awards, including The Eyes of Texas Award, the DeCloux Fellowship, and the Marinus Smith Award. He held a bachelor’s degree in music education from Towson University, a master’s degree in wind conducting from the University of Colorado, and a doctorate in wind conducting from The University of Texas at Austin.
Carnochan is survived by his wife of 27 years, Karen Salwerowicz, and their daughter Alexandra Carnochan, and son Addison Carnochan.
