Departments
Music
Education
- Doctor of Musical Arts, Composition and Theory, Cornell University
- BM, Music Composition and Theory, Penn State University
The creative work of Brian Robison reflects his performing experience in a broad range of musical styles. His awards include commissions from the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund (2008) and Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble (2008), and composer residencies at Aaron Copland House (2006), the MacDowell Colony (2006), and Norton Island (2005). Additionally, in 2005 a comprehensive “Brian Robison Collection” was initiated as part of the Contemporary Music Research Collection in the Diehn Composers Room at Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA), to facilitate scholarly investigation of his music.
Recent performances include his Bonfire of the civil liberties by Boston Musica Viva (Boston, MA, February 2019) and Field guide to North American car alarms by the New England Philharmonic (Boston, MA, February 2016), both under the direction of Richard Pittman, and his Hundenschnarchenwiegenlied under the aegis of Ensemble Pamplemousse at Roulette Intermedium (Brooklyn, NY, May 2016).
Dr. Robison has presented papers on Fiona Apple’s chromatic harmony (Storrs, CT, April 2012), and on postmodern aspects of 1970s progressive rock (Dijon, France, December 2014). His analytic work includes published articles on the music of Sir Harrison Birtwistle, King Crimson, and the so-called “Sensitive Female Chord Progression,” and his forthcoming article on “Game-based learning in the popular music classroom” will be included in the volume Teaching Popular Music in the Classroom: Essays (McFarland, 2019).
