Sunday, February  27, 7pm
Bassist Rick Robinson & Pianist Linette Popoff-Parks

By Larry Gabriel, www.gumbospot.com, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   

Bassist Rick Robinson and pianist Linette Popoff-Parks will take this unusual instrumental pairing and intimate setting to present chamber compositions with an exotic ambience. Robinson, a composer and 21-year veteran of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO), and Popoff-Parks, chair of the music department at Madonna University, have performed across the country in various settings. Together they play what they call personal classical music.

Robinson, an arranger and composer, is a 2010 Kresge Artist Fellow who first studied music in Highland Park public schools. His talent was nurtured by a musical family, several years at Interlochen Arts Academy, and undergraduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

As a graduate student he attended the New England Conservatory of Music and in 1986 won the Haddonfield (NJ) Symphony competition. While in Boston he served as Principal Bass of the Portland (ME) Symphony, Assistant Principal Bass of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and as a frequent substitute with the Boston and Detroit Symphonies.

In 1989, he accepted a permanent position with the DSO. In 1995, he established the CutTime Players with other DSO musicians to play classical works, as well as jazz standards and his own compositions. His symphonic work Essay No. 1 (After Sibelius) was premiered by the DSO in 2006, followed by his string sextet Mighty Love  the next year.  

Popoff-Parks teaches piano theory and humanities in addition to guiding Madonna’s music department. She studied music at Marygrove College and has two masters degrees from Eastern Michigan University. She is a performing member of The Tuesday Musicale of Detroit, established in 1885 by 12 women pianists, and has featured the music of women composers in performances at Chamber Music at the Scarab Club. She has traveled the country performing chamber works and as a soloist.

Their program includes works by Ernest Bloch, Antonín Dvorák, Johannes Brahms, Rick Robinson and other musical delights to mull a winter evening.

Read more about Rick and CutTime at www.cuttime.com
Hear some of Rick's music at www.cuttime.com/RickPage.htm