Robin Holcomb

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Robin Holcomb (2016)

Robin Holcomb (* 1954 ) is an American jazz - and folk - composer , songwriter and pianist and singer.

Live and act

Holcomb grew up in Georgia and later attended the University of Santa Cruz . She moved to New York with Wayne Horvitz , who later became her husband . In the mid-1980s she worked in the experimental down town scene there with musicians such as Art Baron , Vincent Chancey , Marty Ehrlich , Doug Wieselman and Wayne Horvitz. In the late 1980s her debut LP Larks, They Crazy was released on the German Sound Aspects label, which also released another album on which Horvitz interpreted their compositions with Butch Morris and Bobby Previte , and Doug Wieselman with Bill Frisell . She also worked with Bill Frisell on his Nashville album and participated in a Burt Bacharach and Serge Gainsbourg tribute compilation for the Tzadik label. In 1996 the solo album Little Three was created with piano music and songs. In 2002 she recorded The Big Time , a collection of original compositions and arrangements of traditional American songs, for the Nonesuch label .

She made her debut as a singer / songwriter in 1989 with the musical theater piece Angels at the Four Corners as part of the New Music America program ; Parts of the material appeared on her first Nonesuch album in 1990, for which she received the 1991 “Pazz & Jop Poll” from Village Voice magazine .

Holcomb is the founder and co-director of the New York Composers Orchestra , an ensemble for which she also worked as a pianist and composer. In 1990/91 two albums with her compositions appeared on the New World label , First Program in Standard Time and then The New York Composers Orchestra , on which musicians such as Butch Morris, Herb Robertson , Ray Anderson , Lindsey Horner and Bobby Previte participated.

Holcomb also worked for various dance productions; she wrote for Bebe Miller's dance company Tiny Sisters in the Enormous Land as well as for various television productions.

The New York Times wrote about her stylistic diversity: “Robin Holcomb creates a new American regionalism in her songs, fed by many sources, country, rock, minimalism, civil war songs, Baptist hymns, folk pieces from the Appalachians, even the polytonal music by Charles Ives . The resulting music is so elegant and simple as a quilt of Shaker , and simply beautiful. "

Robin Holcomb has lived in Seattle with Wayne Horvitz since 1988 .

Discographic notes

  • Robin Holcomb / Talking Pictures / Wayne Horvitz: The Point of It All (Songlines, 2010, with Ron Samworth , Bill Clark , Peggy Lee , Dylan van der Schyff )
  • Wayne Horvitz, Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices, and Soloist (New World, 2008)
  • Varmint, Mr Man in the Moon (SnowGhost, 2006)
  • John Brown's Body ( Tzadik , 2006, with the Koehne Quartet )
  • Robin Holcomb / Wayne Horvitz: Solos (Songlines, 2004)
  • The Big Time (Nonesuch, 2002)
  • Little Three (Nonesuch, 1996)
  • Rockabye (Elektra, 1992)
  • Robin Holcomb (Elektra, 1990)
  • Larks, They Crazy (Sound Aspects, 1988)
  • Wayne Horvitz, Butch Morris, Robert Previte, Doug Wieselman, Bill Frisell Play Robin Holcomb: Todos Santos (Sound Aspects, 1988)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Holcomb, Robin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz and folk composer, songwriter, pianist and singer
DATE OF BIRTH 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Georgia