Rick Robinson: CutTime Simfonica at Grosse Pointe Memorial Church Sunday January 21 at 3p-4:30; Eliot Heaton is our featured fiddler; tickets $10 in advance

Rick with former student Candice Smith

 Soprano Alexandra Oikonomo with

Conductor Rick Robinson

CutTime Simfonica after TEDx Detroit 2016

Rick Robinson writes:

December 28, 2017

Hello Friends,      

 

Happy Holidays Friends!

I hope you're having a warm holiday season! If you're too busy to read this, just skip to the bottom for our next show, the new video and please support us. 

Christmas is always a favorite time of concerts for classical musicians. CutTime Simfonica has a new holidays program we tried out for our Noel Night set at La Palma Mediterranean. We learned that baroque music with soft sleighbells is a big winner!

I want to extend my highest gratitude to the many musicians, administrators, teachers, new fans and supporters we turned on in 2017! Things slowly began taking off with larger, private projects and special events including a soon-to-be-announced recording release.

CutTime Players returned to Greater Grace Temple for a new set of symphonic Christmas songs alternating with high gospel fireworks. I even got work with a young student I knew from my volunteer work at Detroit Schools of the Arts years ago. We're so honored to support their celebration into the future.

Last week, I was called at noon Monday asking for a CutTime concert in their office noon TUESDAY, to honor a special guest for our new client at Hutzel Hospital! I said, "No problem." We're getting many calls to play lunch hours at offices, evening corporate events, gallery events and small house concerts. It doesn't put us further out in the general public, but it often pays well and plants more seeds.

The week before, I contracted and conducted an orchestra for a society Christmas gala with two solo pianists (Bach & Gershwin concertos), a rising opera star (3 arias) and the CutTime Players. We had a marvelous time.

I was contracted to play bass in some parts of Schubert Mass in G and the cello quintet. The student choir at Dearborn HS immediately loved the power, shaping and professionalism of the string quintet so much, I wrote strongly how it might've changed her life.

Even Christmas Eve, sight-reading a double Christmas mass (9p & midnight) in another string quintet, the deepest context for Grieg, Holst, the carols, the creation mass and all the church musicians, built tremendously upon the occasion! Life is so beautiful with such music in it.

Coming up is an annual chamber music party at a dear friend's home. With four rooms playing quartets simultaneously (at a low level), it sounds less like a music school than an orgy of Schumann, Beethoven, Schubert and my favorite, Brahms! That's the peak of my holiday the last 15 years.

Finally, I want to add what a triple pleasure it's been to sub into the Ann Arbor and Lansing Symphony Orchestras. Besides getting to play symphonies again, it's the best way to recruit new musicians for casual classical events across the region, to make a difference plugging into the full symphonic machine, and to get paid for it too, even if not DSO wages.

Also, it sharpens my sense of community service, to these musicians as well as the general public. We just need sponsors and donors for a local raw classical series. In 2018 we may find the resources to once again scale up our impactful, free, public events. Please help us with contacts curious about effective commercial classical in clubs and for new audience development and community outreach services that matter.

To that end, we have a new video from our Open Streets show in October. It shows the promise of our new partnerships with Urban Requiem Project and spoken word.

Come see CutTime Simfonica at Grosse Pointe Memorial Church Sunday January 21 at 3p-4:30. MOT Concertmaster Eliot Heaton is our featured fiddler and tickets are only $10 each in advance. See the Facebook event page here.

CutTime Simfonica returns to Cleveland April 17-19 with stellar shows for the Rocky River Senior Center featuring Cleveland Institute of Music alum (like me).

With new tax changes coming at us, now is the best time in the foreseeable future to support the artistic innovations of CutTime® via Fractured Atlas. Have a very Happy New Years and thank you for supporting the arts!

- Rick Robinson (Mr. CutTime)