|
Concerts by Composers: Robin Holcomb
Works Performed or Excerpted:
1. “Excerpt from June 23, 1983” – Robin Holcomb and Wayne Horvitz, keyboards and drum machine
2. “2 Improvisations from Themes” – Robin Holcomb, piano
Robin Holcomb
Improvising pianist, composer, singer and songwriter Robin Holcomb has performed throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Asia as a solo artist and the leader of various ensembles.
Her most recent recording is The Point of It All (Songlines 2010), a collaborative project with Talking Pictures and Wayne Horvitz featuring her instrumental compositions and songs. John Brown’s Body (Tzadik 2006) is a collection of solo piano music, songs and chamber compositions/improvisations. Solos (Songlines 2004) features solo piano music by Robin Holcomb and Wayne Horvitz, performed by the composers. The Big Time, Little Three, Rockabye and Robin Holcomb are four critically acclaimed recordings on the Nonesuch label. Previous recordings of instrumental music include Larks, They Crazy and Todos Santos, both on the German Sound Aspects label, and First Program in Standard Time and The New York Composers Orchestra (New World). Other recording projects include a contributions to Things About Comin’ My Way: A Tribute to the Music of the Mississippi Sheiks (Red Hen 2009), Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys (Anti 2006), The Anthology of American Folk Music: Revisited (Shout Factory 2006), Burt Bacharach and Serge Gainsbourg tribute compilations (Tzadik) and collaborations with Bill Frisell on his landmark Nashville recording.
Ms. Holcomb is a founder and co-director of The New York Composers Orchestra and WACO (The Washington Composers Orchestra), ensembles for which she is also conductor, pianist and principal composer. She is currently creating new work and arrangements for the Seattle Women’s Jazz Orchestra. In addition to creating scores for the Joe Goode Performance Group’s Bessie Award-winning Deeply There, and The Bebe Miller Dance Company’s Tiny Sisters In The Enormous Land, her music was featured in The White Oak Dance Company’s Oz, choreographed by Paul Taylor. Ms. Holcomb created the score for the PBS documentary “A Woman’s Health”, and contributed music to the Huchoosedeh, Voices of the Heart documentary. She has composed music for various theatrical and film productions, including Nikki Appino’s Project X: Before the Comet Comes and her own Angels at the Four Corners, premiered at the New Music America Festival at Dance Theatre Workshop in New York City. Other song cycles include The Utopia Project, premiered at Mass MoCA, O, Say a Sunset based on the writings and correspondence of Rachel Carson, which toured nationally.
Current projects include the creation with Wayne Horvitz of Smokestack Arias, a song cycle about the Everett Massacre to premiere at ACT Theatre Seattle in 2012 and We Are All Failing Them an investigation in words and music of the Donner Party saga with Britta Johnson (film), Curtis Taylor (shadow projections) and Susie Kozawa (sound artist) to premiere at Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum in 2013.
The New York Times had this to say about her difficult-to-define musical style: "Robin Holcomb...has created a new American regionalism, spun from many threads - country, rock, minimalism, Civil War songs, Baptist hymns, Appalachian folk tunes, even the polytonal music of Charles Ives. The music that results is as elegantly simple as a Shaker Quilt, and no less beautiful."
Robin Holcomb on the Experimental Intermedia Series
"I attended only a handful of concerts at Experimental Intermedia. It was one of a number of bright lights Downtown that was, at that time, rich in the number of distinctive (and often diminutive) venues focusing on the presentation of new music. People listened with ferocious concentration, nothing polite about it. Phill’s gorgeous film of fishing boats left a lasting impression.
Lona Foote, who was working with Phill at the time, extended an invitation to me to present something at Experimental Intermedia. She had attended some concerts of mine at Studio Henry, a basement space on Morton Street that I co-founded and was running at the time. I didn’t know until a few days ahead that there would be no piano available at the performance, so Wayne Horvitz and I put together some rudimentary tape and keyboard pieces including a short-wave radio rant picked up while we were working in our building on St. Mark’s Place going on about a junkie who had just been shot in Tompkins Square Park. Tim Page wrote in the NY Times: “Her deliberately awkward phrasings and austere harmonizations are there for a reason. And if the reasons remain obscure, her sincerity is not to be doubted. In time, Miss Holcomb may offer something fully worthy of her ideas.” It was definitely one of several starts for me." - Robin Holcomb 2011
Robin Holcomb in DRAM
More on Robin Holcomb
|
