Dr. Rob Hunt often recalls the Dallas orphanage where he spent his childhood. It was a happy existence, he says, as it was easy to find friends among the orphans and wards of the Buckner Baptist Children’s Home. “We shared loads of baseball and football games on the weekends,” he says. “You could get up a whole army with hundreds of players.” As a teenager, Rob often mentioned his orphanage upbringing to his advantage, he says with a chuckle, but in truth, he and his two sisters lived there with their parents, who were employees.
When Rob was about four years old, he discovered an upright piano in the parlor of one of the dorms at the children’s home. He vividly remembers reaching up to the keys so he could pick out Leaning on the Everlasting Arms—a song he’d heard at church—by ear. He also recalls his first “esthetic experience,” which occurred when he was about three or four years old. “There was a wonderful pipe organ in the chapel where we had our Sunday services,” he says. The sound gave Rob a thrill. “I loved it,” he says. “I wanted to understand it, and I wanted to do it.”
Fortunately, Rob’s parents, both musicians, recognized Rob’s giftedness, as did a cultured employee of the orphanage, who took Rob to see My Fair Lady and other touring Broadway musicals. For everyday entertainment, Rob watched famous conductors on television. His mother began teaching him to play the piano when he was five years old; when he was six, he took lessons from a piano teacher in Dallas. By the time he was 11, Rob was studying piano at Southern Methodist University (SMU), and he won the State Fair of Texas Talent Show when he was in junior high school.
At 14, Rob was already a veteran performer. He played for 23,000 at a pregame show in the Astrodome, accompanying the Buckner Home’s choral group, as well as performing a piano solo of his own arrangement of the Theme from Exodus.
Rob, however, did not enjoy high school. Residents of the children’s home were bused to W. W. Samuell High School, which Rob did not find intellectually or musically challenging. “I hated it,” he confesses. He doesn’t remember who told him about the new Skyline Center, a high school that taught several pre-professional programs, including performing arts, but it caught his attention. At Rob’s audition, students were asked to improvise musical embellishments to complement a simple African folk tune. Although other students struggled, Rob completed the assignment with ease, and he was admitted to the school for his junior and senior years. “It changed my life,” Rob says. “I was in music classes four hours a day studying with stellar faculty, including famous musicians who would stop by and do masters classes,” he says. Furthermore, he was in his element with other musically-talented students.
Although several prestigious music conservatories tried to recruit Rob, his parents wanted him to attend their alma mater, Howard Payne University. While studying there, Rob traveled to seven countries as piano accompanist to the university’s Heritage Singers. After one year, however, Rob transferred to SMU, a move that gave him many employment opportunities in the music industry. It was not a typical college experience. Rob recalls the professor of an early-morning class routinely asking, “Where did you gig last night?”
During this time, Rob began writing and playing jingles for television and radio commercials. Most of his work was aired on local stations, such as the often-played jingle he wrote for Minyard’s Grocery Store, but some, including ones for Pizza Hut, received national audiences. Rob also played at nightclubs, where he became captivated with jazz piano.
Rob continued his formal music education at Texas Christian University (TCU), where he earned a master’s degree in musicology. There, he met his future wife. Jackie was a music major, and Rob was her graduate assistant teacher. The couple would later raise a son and a daughter; both are now professional musicians.
Although Rob wanted to play jazz, country music came knocking, and Rob became Ray Price’s pianist and conductor. Ray’s band often linked up with Willie Nelson’s band, so Rob got to know both legendary musicians. Rob enjoyed many memorable moments during this era, like the time during the filming of Honeysuckle Rose when Jackie had to hold his music so a strong wind didn’t blow it away. On another occasion, Rob substituted for Willie’s pianist (his sister, Bobbie Nelson), playing songs by ear.
Rob also fondly remembers Ray Price. On one occasion, Hoyt Axton’s segment of a concert lasted much longer than expected. Rob needed to get home for a church job on Sunday morning, and Ray gave Rob a ride in his limo so he could catch a redeye flight out of Los Angeles. “It struck me as being very surreal,” Rob says. “We were going 90 mph, maybe 100, on the freeway at three in the morning.” At one point, Ray’s hit For the Good Times came on the radio, but Ray demanded that it be turned off.
In 1983, Dallas was losing its edge in the music industry, so Rob enrolled in the University of Indiana’s esteemed music program to work on his Ph.D. in conducting. While he was there, he detoured long enough to become certified to teach music. Years later, his students would benefit from the techniques he learned.
Just three hours short of his degree, Rob walked away when he snagged a dream job as conductor of the Midland-Odessa Symphony. (Although he didn’t think he’d ever return to college, Rob commuted from his home in The Woodlands many years later and earned a Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of Houston.) In addition to conducting traditional orchestra music, Rob enhanced the symphony’s popular music program. On one occasion, the symphony played with The Moody Blues; later, they shared the stage with Kansas.
Although some talented musicians have difficulty teaching, Rob enjoys sharing his musical expertise with others. He taught music theory and piano at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) from 2008 until 2016, also serving as the music director for the Opera Workshop. Competing against universities such as Harvard and Yale for The American Prize in Opera Performance, SHSU operas won first place in 2013 and third place in 2015.
Rob loves making—and teaching—music so much, he has no plans to retire. Today, he teaches music theory and piano at Lone Star College-Kingwood (LSC-K). It’s exciting, he says, to identify and nurture talent, but he finds it equally rewarding to help struggling students. In 2024, he earned the LSC-K Faculty Excellence Award.
Rob also conducts the Kingwood Pops Orchestra (KPO), a multi-generational organization affiliated with LSC-K. Orchestra members applaud Rob for his skillful conducting and for his polite, respectful teaching techniques. One orchestra member laughs that instead of berating musicians for mistakes, Rob once mildly said, “I’m hearing some things that aren’t in my score.”
For Rob, the best part about conducting KPO is working with its artistic advisory committee to create interesting programs. In 2022, KPO hosted three Broadway musicians; in 2023, the Victory Belles, a vocal trio from the National WWII Museum, joined the orchestra. Twice, KPO has shared the stage with the Undercover Band for classic rock concerts. Most recently, attendees sang along and danced in the aisles when KPO featured music from the 1960s.
Rob seems to have endless energy. He has served eleven churches over five decades in part- and full-time positions as choir director and organist, and he has written and arranged countless songs. His best-known may be his choral arrangement of Wondrous Love, which was recently named a favorite by the Richmond, Virginia chapter of the American Guild of Organists. “I am kind of proud of that,” Rob says. Some of Rob’s arrangements have been performed at Carnegie Hall by Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops.
Most recently, Rob collaborated with Stephen Schwartz, the renowned composer of many musicals, including Wicked, to re-orchestrate the opera Séance on a Wet Afternoon for a small ensemble. “He got so busy with Wicked and his new Broadway show that I ended up doing it pretty much myself,” Rob says. He enjoyed “getting to work with a legend,” but it was a mammoth job. “Every one of the 800 pages was rewritten many times,” Rob says. The opera was performed in July 2025 in Houston.
Rob has many memories of his long, eclectic career, but one stands out. While conducting the Midland-Odessa Symphony, Rob asked his former TCU professor Ron Shirey to provide a large choir for the orchestra’s performance of the Carmina Burana cantata. Rob rehearsed the choir in the same building where he had spent time as a student. “When I stepped onto that podium to conduct the 200 voices from the combined choirs with my teacher looking on, beaming, it was a crowning moment in my professional life,” he says, “and to hear Mr. Shirey say, ‘Rob Hunt has turned into a hell of a conductor.’”
