January 20, 2023

Let me set the scene: a small club in downtown Lansing, a largely hipster, sold out crowd, glasses of beer being sipped (or gulped), music of the 1990’s, 2000’s 2010’s and today. What instruments do you expect to see on stage? Guitars perhaps, maybe a drummer?
 
Actually, it was piano, violin, cello and clarinet (with a big feature for the fabulous bass clarinet). Ok, maybe it wasn’t the “greatest hits” of those eras, but it was some of the greatest classical chamber music of those times. This was the scene for the 1st “LSO@ the Robin” concerts of the season, one of four such concerts of chamber music of our time, played in the super-hip Robin Theater.  
 
Since it was just chamber music, I had the night off and could just sit back and listen to our fabulous musicians knock this concert out of the park. It was so exciting for me to see so many new people in our audience and hear them respond to this music with such enthusiastiasm.  It was great to see how they were caught up in the energy of the music in this intimate setting.
 
The entire program was made up of music by composers who had roots in Michigan. Three of them were in attendance and spoke with the audience a bit about their music, namely Michael Daugherty, Paul Dooley and our Composer-In-Residence Patrick Harlin. Also on the program we heard works from Carlos Simon, Gabriela Lena Frank, Meg Okura and Derek Bermel.
 
Our next installment of LSO@The Robin will be next month. It’s a program of crossover music... works of classical music with roots in bluegrass,  or rock and roll, or hip hop, even some Yiddish! I hope you can join us!