Sharon Robinson

A member of the unusually long-lasting Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, cellist Sharon Robinson is among the top chamber music players of the 20th and 21st centuries. She has also been active as a concerto soloist, solo recitalist, and educator. Robinson was born on December 2, 1949, in Houston, Texas. Her parents were both members of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and Robinson and her siblings, Hal, Erica, Keith, and Kim, all became successful string players. Sharon attended the North Carolina School for the Arts. She went on to the University of Southern California and then to the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, from which she graduated in 1972. Robinson made her debut as a chamber player two years later, joining violinist Jaime Laredo and pianist Samuel Sanders in a New York concert. Her solo debut came in 1977 with a recital featuring music by Beethoven, Britten, Rachmaninov, and George Crumb. That year was a significant one in Robinson's life in other ways as well: she married Laredo, and the couple, with pianist Joseph Kalichstein, were invited to perform at the inauguration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The trio found chemistry and continued to perform together, establishing itself formally as the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio in 1981. With this group, Robinson made some 20 recordings, including a complete set of the Brahms piano trios. The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio remained active well into the 2010s. Robinson's solo career continued as well; she has appeared with the Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Helsinki Philharmonic, among many other top orchestras. Robinson has been especially visible at festivals, including the South Bank Festival in London, the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, and the Marlboro Festival in Vermont, where Robinson and Laredo live; there, she collaborated with pianist Rudolf Serkin and violinist Alexander Schneider. Robinson has been quite visible in popular media, appearing on The Today Show, The Tonight Show, and The Dick Cavett Show on television, as well as on radio's A Prairie Home Companion. Robinson has given many master classes and taught for some years at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. She joined the faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2012. Strongly committed to contemporary music, Robinson has commissioned works from various top composers, including Arvo Pärt, Ned Rorem, and Leon Kirchner. Some of these were double concertos for her and Laredo to play, and in 2011, they recorded three of these, by Richard Danielpour, David Ludwig, and Daron Aric Hagen, on the Bridge album Triple Doubles. ~ James Manheim, Rovi