The Orchestra in Your Pocket
In 1993 Robinson started transcribing music by computer for solo bass. The next year he booked the pilot programs for the mixed octet CutTime Players (CTP) with several DSO principal musicians, to produce Stravinsky’s complete music-drama, Histoire du Soldat, plus his first ensemble reduction, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. He was immediately invited to produce a local, collaborative family concert series that included Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Kabalevsky’s The Comedians Suite, Beethoven’s Fur Elise and Bolling’s jazz suites, among other short works.
CutTime Players quickly became a defacto pocket-orchestra-slash-jazz-band, introducing the symphony anywhere orchestras can’t fit. And from the start Robinson began teaching-hosting, learning to share a performer’s perspective to make sense of instrumental music (sonata) for family audiences that might draw them to DSO in Midtown. The effort became a charitable mission once Robinson became a Kresge Fellow and learned of the Classical Revolution movement during the DSO labor dispute in 2010. Launching the Detroit chapter of CR, Robinson created further methods and metaphors to info-tain casual listeners with fun and lively music, interactions, clever insights, variety, and some improv.
