Vickie Hyland (Hyland) (1965)

Yes I believe he was my music teacher. He had such patience with me.

NICE Man!

Vickie Hyland

Lola May Haney (Walker) (1959)

I was in Paris American HS where he was our chorus director! He was a wonderful teacher!!

Rus Krause (1965)

Bob Oliveira is one of the most influential people in my life, and certainly the best teacher I ever had.  What he taught us, through the beauty of music, was self-discipline, responsibility, interdependence, persistence, and at least for me, how to push through fatigue to find new energy reserves.  He demanded a lot of us, and usually got it. 

When I left Paris in 1966 I moved, at his recommendation, to California, to the town in Northern California where Bob went to college, and still live there.  I didn't continue with the kind of music Bob taught us, but music has been central to my life and I owe that to him.  He was able to see qualities in us that we were too young to see in ourselves. 

Jeff Meilandt (1962)

Robert Olievera was a prodical genius and brilliant teacher who directed both the PAHS Chrous and the Madrigal Singers.  I sang in both groups as the youngest singer (bass baritone) - I was in the 8th grade at the time, and all the Madrigals were Seniors - what an amazing experience!  We traveled to Charlesroi Belgium once, to sing with the combined A Coeur Joie chorusus from all over Europe. Robert taught us black sprituals, and the European audiences ate them up. For Christmas one year we did the Bengamin Britten Ceremony of Carols, sung in Middle English - He once had Nadia Boulanger, who taught composition to Burt Bacharach, Daniel Barenboim, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, John Eliot Gardiner, Philip Glass, Roy Harris, Quincy Jones, Astor Piazzolla, Virgil Thomson, George Walker and possibly Olivier Messian - this lady convinced Copland, who was from Brooklyn, to stop trying to sound like European composers of the past, and use the themes of America in his compostions, which resulted in "Applician Spring", "Rodeo", and "Fanfare for the Common Man" ...and she taught Robert, an expat from WW2 who found his home in France. Robert asked Mastra Boulanger to teach us the Gabriel Faure Requium, which we sang with full orchestra in the Chathedral of Orleans. 

Robert Olivera spent his final days in one of the most American of places, Bakersfield California, birthplace of one of the most iconic of American songwriters and singers, Merle Haggard.  Fitting somehow, since Robert brought both American and European musical heritages together, and touched the live of a lucky bunch of American kids in a way that will remain with all of us always.