Halfway in its 28 years CutTime Productions (aka CutTime®) developed into a powerful-if-unconventional mission-enterprise to charitably reset the context of classical, and esp. symphonic music, for Americans who generally ignore them. It also develops a new feeder infrastructure for a commercial concert tradition to grow into the future. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, CutTime Founder Rick Robinson said,”We couldn’t safely make classical music work around popular culture because of cigarette smoke, for our intolerance of noise and the dread of so-called ‘dumbing it down.’ With the existential clock ticking louder post-pandemic, we must try everything to supplement the traditional narrative and begin working adaptively.
Let us become both bold and humble in an adjustable balance.”
A cut time is a frequent musical symbol calling for either a fast or a swinging beat ( technically; two beats per bar). We adopted this symbol in 1994 as a guiding principle to make classical music fast and swinging initially, and later as easy, affordable, and accessible as rock, folk, and jazz. CutTime quickly came to mean, Let’s cut the time it takes new listeners to feel some of what the musicians feel, esp. regarding shaping phrases (tension and release).
Near the end of his 22 year tenure in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO), Robinson committed to a charitable artistic-mission that serves a broader public by introducing music and listening skills, and how to find or create meaning in instrumental sonatas. Each info-taining CutTime event creates some immediate context and fervent emotions. Originally developed for churches and schools, CutTime has fit symphonic music into breweries, restaurants, special events, corporate lunches and dinners, clubs, homes, offices, senior centers, and streets festivals; always hosted lively, and amplified when appropriate.
Robinson has been an innovative force in bringing chamber ensembles into nontraditional venues and classrooms, mixing it up with a variety of creative repertoire and generally proving that classical music belongs not on the fringes of contemporary culture but at the heart of everyday life.
– Detroit Free Press Music Critic Mark Stryker
Music critic Jeffrey Rossman of Classical Voice of North Carolina called CutTime founder Rick Robinson, “a modern-day Dvorak… [whose] personality, aggressive advocacy of [practical outreach], and his remarkable playing, composing and arranging skills put him in the forefront of this movement.”