Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Rick Robinson: Friday, February 6, 2015 at 8 PM, CutTime Simfonica – 'The Legacy of Black-American Classical Composers' at The Carr Center, Detroit


Light Metal Brass Band Quintet
plays a variety of music

Kelly Cleaver

Rick Robinson


William Grant Still (1895-1978), Duke Ellington (1899-1974) and Scott Joplin (c. 1867-1917) are profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a comprehensive Works List for William Grant Still and 
Scott Joplin by Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma, http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com.


Rick Robinson:

February 3, 2015

The HAPPIEST of New Years to you!

Friday, February 6, 2015
CutTime Simfonica – The Legacy of Black-American Classical Composers @ The Carr Center
311 E. Grand River Detroit, MI 48226
Black-Americans have been great innovators in music, even in classical, despite its history of discrimination. Learn how musicians determined to express their cultural life in the versatile medium of the symphony overcame roadblocks with this 75-minute program of strings and percussion. There will be works never before performed at The Carr Center by Dvorak, Hailstork, Bach and Glinka with classic masterpieces by Duke Ellington, William Grant Still, Scott Joplin and Rick Robinson.


CutTime® and I are overjoyed to announce the completion of the match phase of our Knight Foundation project to professionalize the Classical Revolution Detroit series (CRD), now starting its fifth year, expanding it to three events each month thru December. We want to thank ALL of our new supporters online and recent fundraisers, our dear friends Barbara Van Dusen and James B. Nicholson as well as the Kresge Foundation, which gave a last minute grant to the project. Please join us in thanking them!

We began last week already with events at Baker's Keyboard Lounge and Northern Lights Lounge and are scheduling new events as quickly and as broadly as we can, to share our passion with lively classical and context throughout the city. Our next CRD event is booked for St. Cece's in Corktown Feb. 25 (Tu) 7p-10 with THREE more events TBA elsewhere that week. We are very lucky that Charith Premawardhana, the FOUNDER of Classical Revolution, will be able to join us that whole week! The project year will culminate with a big week around Beethoven's two birthdays, Dec. 16 & 17, exactly when we launched CRD with volunteers back in 2010.

Meanwhile, having recently returned from the annual major venue conferences in NYC, then having played in the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra for the annual concerto competition in Detroit, CutTime has Simfonica (strings and percussion) playing several performances the next 2 weeks. We hope you can make at least one of them. This Friday 8p we're at the Carr Center in downtown Detroit, with a repeat at The Yellow Barn in Ann Arbor. Next Thursday (2/12) we'll play a short set at 1p for Birmingham Musicale Club and will be broadcast LIVE on West Bloomfield cable TV. CutTime is coming to YOU! Check the Calendar frequently for the latest.

Then we head to Cleveland, Ohio, for shows with at the Euclid Tavern (2/16) on the eastside and The Happy Dog (2/17) on the westside, before we play a LIVE segment on The Sound of Applause radio series with host Dee Perry Feb. 18 2:30 at 90.3-FM in the Cleveland listening area. This will also be streamed on the web here, and air again at 10:30.

We're very happy to introduce our enthusiastic new volunteer, Kelly Cleaver, who will be working mainly on development for CutTime's projects. Kelly is on the development staff at the College for Creative Studies and is a native Detroiter with an arts background. Look for her at our next events; she would love to hear your reactions and suggestions (as would I).

Another enthusiastic new believer is the super-dapper, designer-singer Robert Dempster, owner of Studio D Gallery in Birmingham. He caught our private fundraiser in November and immediately offered to throw a public one at his gallery the next month! We are planning a repeat, so watch this station! 

Remember that there's many ways YOU can volunteer for Team CutTime like Kelly and Robert! Tell your network about our events nearby, bring someone who doesn't like classical, share this newsletter with influencers who care about classical! We cannot do this without your assistance! Naturally, we need donations too.

I think you can see why I would tell you that 2015 promises to be a landmark year for ALL of us who believe that it's TIME to cut loose with classical for a wider community! Across the industry I'm finding new willingness to experiment for missing audiences

I'm further encouraged the new NEA chairman Jane Chu would hail Classical Revolution in her remarks at the Chamber Music America conference last month as an example of what's making a difference in classical music. She told us that the solutions we seek are not either-or, rather both-and. Privately, we agreed to start a ideology of BOTH-- for inclusive practice-- because to move forward, the fine arts have to find balance with all the other arts and artists. A diversity of solutions permits us to appreciate art and life all around us.

We hope to see you SOON!

- Rick Robinson  

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