Chamber Soloists of Detroit: Spring Romance Robyn Bollinger – violin; Pauline Martin – piano
April 23 @ 4:00 pm
Chamber Soloists of Detroit: Spring Romance
Robyn Bollinger - violin
Pauline Martin - piano
Sunday, April 23rd, 2023 at 4:00 pm
Introducing… Detroit Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Robyn Bollinger!
“…her performance seemed to catch fire, projecting both a sense of visceral commitment and a physical athleticism placed at the service of bold musical expression.”
~The Boston Globe
Join us for a very special recital featuring violinist Robyn Bollinger, the newest Detroit Symphony Orchestra concertmaster, in concert with Chamber Soloists of Detroit Artistic Director & Steinway Artist, pianist Pauline Martin. Spring Romance features the beloved Beethoven “Spring” Sonata op. 24 and Fauré’s exquisite Sonata in A Major complemented by romantic gems of Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger and Amy Beach!
KCH’s Classical Salon presentations are generously supported in part by Genre Underwriters, Maurice & Linda Binkow.
Daring, versatile, and charismatic, American violinist Robyn Bollinger is the newly appointed Concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Equally at home as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral leader, and pedagogue, Ms. Bollinger is an artist at the forefront of classical music.
Having made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut at age twelve, Ms. Bollinger regularly performs with orchestras across the United States. Past highlights include engagements with the Boston Pops and the symphony orchestras of Brevard, California, Charleston, Grand Tetons Music Festival, Helena, Illinois, Indian Hill, Knoxville, and Symphony in C. In 2019, Ms. Bollinger gave the world premiere of Artifacts, a four-movement violin concerto commissioned by the California Symphony by composer Katherine Balch written specifically for Ms. Bollinger.
A sought-after collaborator and recitalist, Ms. Bollinger is a popular figure on chamber music stages around the world. She is a returning participant at the acclaimed Marlboro Music Festival and has been featured in numerous national tours with “Musicians from Marlboro.” She has toured in Midori’s Music Sharing International Community Engagement Program “ICEP” in Japan, performing in recital in Osaka’s Phoenix Hall, Tokyo’s Oji Hall, and Tokyo National Arts Center. A prizewinner at the 2007 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, Ms. Bollinger has appeared at the chamber music festivals of Halcyon, Highlands-Cashiers, Lake Champlain, Monadnock, and Orcas Island. She has presented recitals at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, National Sawdust, Emory University, Kalliroscope Gallery, Live from Indian Hill, the California Symphony, and more. She appears regularly with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble in Boston, the Boston Chamber Music Society, Mistral Music, Spruce Peak Chamber Music Society, and Glissando Music, among others.
Ms. Bollinger has been recognized for both her innovation and entrepreneurship. She received a prestigious Fellowship from the Lenore Annenberg Arts Fellowship Fund for her multimedia performance project, “CIACCONA: The Bass of Time,” later releasing a commercial CD and DVD of the project and presenting a national tour of the program. An examination of the history and legacy of the Bach’s famed chaconne for solo violin, the program received critical acclaim from the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. Ms. Bollinger has also been recognized with an Entrepreneurial Musicianship Grant from New England Conservatory for her ground-breaking “Project Paganini,” a performance project featuring the twenty-four Caprices of Paganini. She was recently awarded a historic Early-Career Musician Fellowship from Dumbarton Oaks Museum in Washington, D.C., to research and prepare her next multimedia project, “Encore! Just One More,” to be debuted in future seasons.
A noted leader and ensemble player, Ms. Bollinger was appointed Concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra by Music Director Jader Bignamini at the end of the 2021-22 season. She is a frequent Guest Concertmaster with the Pittsburgh Symphony and has made Guest Concertmaster appearances with the Indianapolis Symphony and St. Bart’s Music Festival Orchestra. She is a former member of the Boston-based, democratically run chamber orchestra, A Far Cry, and she has appeared on commercial recordings with both the Pittsburgh Symphony and A Far Cry, all of which were nominated for prestigious GRAMMY® awards.
Ms. Bollinger is a devoted educator, having presented masterclasses at the Cincinnati Conservatory, the Longy School of music, University of California Bakersfield, Temple University Preparatory School, and a unique masterclass examining classical music in the context of Aristotle at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. She is a former faculty member at New England Conservatory Preparatory School in Boston and Brandeis University. She earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees with academic honors from New England Conservatory. Her major teachers included Soovin Kim, Miriam Fried, Paul Biss, Paul Kantor, and Lyle Davidson. Ms. Bollinger currently plays on a 1697 G. B. Rogeri violin on generous loan from a private collector and a 2013 Benoit Rolland bow commissioned specially for her.
Pauline Martin’s Washington debut recital captured the Washington Post headline, Pauline Martin’s Dazzling Debut. Kenneth Townsend wrote: “a balanced, colorful and thoroughly engrossing performance . . . rewarded by loud, sustained applause.” The Canadian born pianist continues to earn international recognition for her solo and chamber music performances and recordings, and has been the focus of several radio and television broadcasts in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
As soloist, Pauline Martin has appeared with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the New American Chamber Orchestra, the Florida West Coast Symphony and Orchestra London Canada, among others, with such conductors as Lan Shui, Thomas Wilkins, Leslie Dunner, Yves Abel, Kirk Muspratt, Paul Wolfe, Alexis Hauser, and Laszlo Gati. Her March, 2009 performance of Mozart’s Concerto K. 365 with the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra (with Zhihua Tang and conductor Charles Burke) was recorded by Chinese National Television for broadcast to an audience of over a billion viewers.
A founding member of the St. Clair Trio, Pauline earned a first-round Grammy nomination for Hobson’s Choice (works by Sir Malcolm Arnold, Koch International Classics) and a Chamber Music America-WQXR/FM award for Old Acquaintances (works by Franz Waxman), given to outstanding new releases of 2000. Martin has also collaborated with violinists Itamar Zorman, James Ehnes, Andrés Cárdenes, Scott St. John, Timothy Braun, Aaron Berofsky, Emmanuelle Boisvert, Yoonshin Song and Yehonatan Berick; violists Sharon Wei, Jean-Baptiste Aguessy and Kathryn Votapek; flutists Bonita Boyd and Amy Porter; cellists Edward Arron, Robert deMaine, Erik Ásgeirsson and Thomas Wiebe; clarinetist Nicolai Pfeffer, hornist Eric Ruske and oboist Nancy Ambrose King. She has served as Artistic Director of Chamber Soloists of Detroit since 2012.
Pauline has been featured as soloist and chamber musician at a host of regional and international festivals, including the Ann Arbor, Sarasota, Summer Serenades (Rockville, Maryland), Grove (MI), Mackinac Island, Detroit Symphony Tchaikovsky and Meadowbrook Music Festivals, the Aria International Summer Music Academy, Winter Days Festival of Scandinavia, as well as in several Irving S. Gilmore Foundation Educational programs.
Her diversity in standard through contemporary repertoire is represented on the recent Naxos American Classics’ CD Imaginary Creatures (works by James Hartway) and Postcard from Europe with clarinetist George Stoffan, with world premieres drawing kudos from composers George Crumb, Leslie Bassett, Sir Malcolm Arnold, Susan Botti, Gary Schocker, James Hartway, Lawrence Singer and others.
Pauline has served as a faculty member at Michigan State, Wayne State and Oakland Universities and as Assistant Instructor at Indiana University, completing Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees with Menahem Pressler, and the University of Michigan, where she earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts under the tutelage of Gary Graffman, Theodore Lettvin and former Artist in Residence Andre Watts. She has performed and lectured to the academic community in Canada and the American Midwest, including the Music Teachers’ Association State Conventions of Michigan and South Dakota, the American Association of University Women and the Michigan Federation of Music Teachers, for which she regularly serves as judge at the local, state and division levels. Her seminars on such topics as Peak Performance and Elements of Style share practical insights drawn from a lifetime of experience in performance and teaching. She celebrates the achievements of her students as competition winners, recitalists, concerto soloists, festival participants, recording artists and teachers.
Pauline Martin is a Steinway Artist
COVID-19 Safety Policy for Indoor Concerts
- Masks are strongly encouraged and available as needed.
- Please do not attend a performance if you are feeling ill or have any symptoms of COVID-19.
