Rick Robinson and River Oaks Chamber Orchestra at the Continental, Houston
Rick Robinson writes:
Nov. 5, 2015
Hello Friend,
Happy Fall Season! CutTime and I have more great stories, pictures and links of our adventures to share with you.
We just returned home to Detroit to close out a 4-month roll
for CutTime®, of concerts, new arrangements, premieres, orchestras,
networking and club classical events across the country. My poor Chevy
minivan saw over 10,000 miles in that time. We told you about the Art As A Weapon premiere in July, and the recurring upstate New York trip in the previous newsletter. Here's what we did next.
Two days before Labor Day, we drove 20 hours south to Texas for a New Music USA partnership we won with the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO) of Houston.
We began rehearsals on the holiday for events as ROCO-CutTime
Simfonica® (string quartet + percussion) the next two days. The level of
musicianship was quite high and we were able to polish a program of
arrangements and compositions to fantastic power! We performed in a
classy restaurant, a senior community and a dive bar (pictured above)
and made a huge impression! People were astonished symphonic music could
be presented so down-to-Earth, intimate and informative. This video by
ROCO tells part of the story:
Two weeks later ROCO premiered our new orchestration of Gitcha Groove On! with conductor Andres Cardenes as part of their season opener, and then at a free outdoor concert for a mixed crowd. A preview in the Houston Chronicle, and New Music USA posted our report as a blog last week. We received an archival recording of the premiere.
Between the ROCO services in Houston, CutTime drove to Dallas and finally met our kindred entrepreneurial spirit, violinist Mark Landson, who founded Open Classical. He grew this series in four years from a monthly classical open mic
to add two professional series and four branches across Texas! Mark is
also a composer/arranger, who believes as we do that people deserve
classical music ALSO as an entertainment format. We compared notes late into the night and Mark bought a whole program of CutTime publications for their Halloween concert.
While in Dallas we had a lengthy interview with San Francisco Classical Voice
that also posted last week (with a few mistakes). We also met up with
some old friends in the Dallas Symphony and made new ones, (with a
possible project in March) before heading out to Santa Fe, Albuquerque
and some welcome dry air. My old roommates, violist Bill Houston and
cellist Joel Becktell, helped us understand the rather complicated and
limited classical music scenes in those New Mexico communities, and how
CutTime might be able to help.
Taking the scenic
southern-most route back towards Houston (driving Interstate-10) let me
see some church friends who retired to Las Cruces, some beautiful mountains east of El Paso and stop in Austin
for an afternoon. Here we met with Austin Symphony violist Martha
Carapetyan and freelance violist Jason Elinoff, the only local musician
involved with the only Classical Revolution event so far in Austin. We
talked on this sweltering hot day about other startup New Classical efforts in this famous indie music city before we made our way to Beaumont to share ideas and music with old friends Douglas Fair and Chelsea Tipton, who together lead the Southeast Texas Symphony.
We
deeply enjoyed our Southern experience, and wanted to stay longer. But
some great gigs were waiting in Michigan. The first was subbing into my
old position in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for the
opening week! It's been almost three years hearing and seeing the
orchestra from the other side, which is the best place for us to
understand what changes might draw a massive new audience. But I was
delighted to sit in again and contribute to a great orchestra with
Leonard Slatkin directing.
The next week wouldn't have
been possible if I were still a member of DSO. The small town of Hart,
Michigan wanted our mixed octet CutTime Players to play an
educational service and an evening concert. So we wrestled up some fine
Michigan Opera Theater Orchestra musicians for two rehearsals and a
run-through at a Classical Revolution Detroit (CRD) in
little St. Cece's Pub in Corktown. Everyone played
musically and had a blast too. Our casual concert in Hart will not soon
be forgotten!
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