CutTime Productions publishes 70% of its vast library of arrangements for mixed octet, string sextet, quartet and quintets totaling over a hundred titles. We began publishing in 1997 after Detroit Symphony Orchestra bassist Rick Robinson transcribed his first ten hits to launch the symphonic outreach ensemble, the mixed octet CutTime Players. The instrumentation is based on the seven instruments of Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. Robinson added flute to first perform Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and the rest made history.
Our first catalog included both septet and octet versions of famous tone poems; The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Kabalevsky’s The Comedians Suite and Weinberger’s Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper, Beethoven’s Fur Elise and Peter. (It is legal to perform your own arrangements of copyright-protected material. Recording and publishing rights, however, are negotiated or simply paid online.) Many dozens of major and short works fill out today’s catalog to list 90 titles that create significant opportunities for orchestras to present their work, musicians and relevancy with greater personality. CutTime is the only enterprise in the world dedicated to presenting mainly symphonic music on the small stage. May this become a fast, lively and intimate first step for new listeners, and musicians, into this magical art form.
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These sheet music publications alone, while challenging to execute, are ideal curriculum for orchestras’ and music schools’ education and community engagement programs (EdCE), for conductor training, and for orchestra-bound instrumentalists. They let us serve the intense polyphony and texture alternations of symphonic music in tight places; potentially acculturating new listeners, and inspiring more musicians to adapt classical music. This is green music sustaining the classical arts ecosystem by feeding with the for-profit world.
Most of these original masterpieces are freely available to all humanity via your rights to the public domain and to some extent imslp.org. For those works that are copyright protected, CutTime Productions (CP) sometimes has print license agreements with G. Schirmer & Hal Leonard. Since 2002 CutTime Players Publishing has been our registered name with ASCAP.
The full catalog includes 50% transcriptions (symphonic reductions) for the mixed octet and septet (CutTime Players), and for the strings (4-6 players in CutTime Simfonica) are 20% popular compositions by Rick Robinson and 20% clever transcriptions.
The remaining catalog are the many cool orchestrations of Rick Robinson’s award-winning compositions (+ string orchestra), including his original “accidental” work for large orchestra, ESSAY After Sibelius, premiered in 2006 by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Following the ESSAY‘s premiere, Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker called Robinson “an armchair composer with promise and a taste for fleshy romantic textures and orchestration.” Robinson then developed this description further, scoring two albums for the string sextet CutTime Simfonica: Mighty Love (2007) and Gitcha Groove On! (2010). Ten years later some of them are orchestrated and recorded LIVE: Gitcha Groove On!, – Pork ‘n Beans – Highland Park, MI: City of Trees.
CutTime means FUN, where big innovation is often found.
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Listen to several quality catalog items on the music player top of the sidebar.
View CutTime’s menu of unique services available to orchestras and music schools.
Download the current catalog here.
Sample some scores here.
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