Paula Robison was born in Tennessee to a family of actors, writers, dancers, and musicians. She spent her childhood in Southern California, learned to play the flute in her school orchestra, and studied dance with Bella Lewitsky and theatre with Jeff Corey. When she was twelve years old music claimed her heart and she knew she wanted to become a flutist.
Study at the Juilliard School followed, with summers at the Marlboro Music Festival. When she was twenty years old, Leonard Bernstein invited her to be a soloist with the New York Philharmonic. When she gave her New York recital debut under the auspices of Young Concert Artists, the New York Times wrote: “Music bursts from her as naturally as leaves from trees”. Soon after that Paula Robison became the first American to win First Prize at the Geneva International Competition, and her career as a world-traveling groundbreaking flute soloist was launched.
When the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center was formed Ms. Robison was invited to join as a founding Artist Member. She performed with the Society for twenty seasons. During the same time she was co-director with Scott Nickrenz of the chamber music concerts at the Spoleto Festivals, presenting many great artists early in their careers. She was awarded the Adelaide Ristori Prize for her contribution to Italian cultural life.
There is a dessert named after her at the Tric-Trac Café in Spoleto, Italy, called the “Coppa Paola”, and a song written for her by Sean Harkness called “Paula”.
A passionate advocate for new music, Paula Robison has commissioned works by Leon Kirchner, Toru Takemitsu, Robert Beaser, Kenneth Frazelle, Oliver Knussen, and Lowell Liebermann, and premiered music by Pierre Boulez, Alberto Ginastera, Elliott Carter, William Schuman, Kieth Jarrett, and Carla Bley, among many others. ”Notturno”, a wildly lyrical hymn to the joys and pains of a life in music, was written for Ms. Robison by Michael Tilson Thomas, and the two artists performed the work together in February of 2008 with Tilson Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony.
In 2008 Paula Robison celebrated 15 years of Vivaldi concerts in the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a performance of “The Four Seasons” in her own transcription for flute and orchestra, and returned to the Cartagena International Festival in Colombia with her Brazilian colleagues guitarist Romero Lubambo and percussionist Cyro Baptista. The Robison-Lubambo-Baptista Trio perfomed at the Cistern in Charleston, South Carolina for the 2008 Spoleto USA Festival.
Paula Robison’s historic recordings for Vanguard Classics are now being reissued. Ms. Robison has also recorded for Sony Classical, CBS Masterworks, Mode (the complete Berio Sequenzas), New World Records, King Records, Musical Heritage Society, and Bridge Recordings (her Marlboro Festival performance of Schubert’s Introduction and Variations with Rudolf Serkin). Her books on the art of flute playing are published by Universal Edition, Schott, European-American Music, and G. Schirmer.
In 2006 Paula Robison founded Pergola Recordings, an independent label. Coming up is an album of live performances including the World Premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s Sonata with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the Prokofiev Sonata with pianist Yefim Bronfman.
One of Ms. Robison’s favorite continuing projects is “With Art”: collaborations with visual artists in unusual spaces. In the fall of 2005, Ms. Robison--as Artist-in-Residence at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum--initiated “Variations on a Theme”, a collaborative project with the great conceptual artist Sol LeWitt and curator Pieranna Cavalchini. On view in the Special Exhibition Gallery was a site-specific wall drawing with daily performances at random hours of Mozart’s works for flute. In the Spring of 2006 she traveled to Jerusalem to create a new collaborative project with artist Jim Schantz and the Pucker Gallery of Boston. The result of this journey, a CD and book called “Places of the Spirit: The Holy Land” was released in April, 2008. Other “With Art” projects have included Luciano Berio’s “Sequenza I” with Italian Art from the 1950s at PS 1 in New York, Toru Takemitsu’s “Itinerant”, in memory of Isamu Noguchi, at the Noguchi Garden Museum in New York, Impressionist music in the Renoir Gallery of the Clark Museum, and a battle with Tim Hawkinson’s “UberOrgan” at MASS MoCA.
Paula Robison has taught at the Juilliard School and given classes all over the world. In the fall of 2005 she rejoined the faculty of The New England Conservatory as the first occupant of the newly-endowed Donna Hieken Flute Chair. She received an Honorary Doctorate from the San Francisco Conservatory in May of 2008, and this February visits the School of Music of the University of Washington as the Hans and Thelma Lehmann Distinguished Lecturer in Music. In November of 2008 she will be honored by the Classical Recording Foundation with its annual Samuel Sanders Award at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall. Ms Robison’s Master Classes at the Diller Quaile School of Music in New York, attracting an international group of professional players and advanced students, is now entering its fourth season.
Paula Robison is married to Scott Nickrenz. Their daughter Elizabeth is a singer-songwriter and doctoral candidate in Human Development/Clinical Ethnography at the University of Chicago.
“A rare artist who can make the flute sound both sensuous and classically pure … An absolute wonder.”
The New York Times