Organ Concert with Daryl Robinson

We are delighted to invite the community to an organ concert with Daryl Robinson at A&M United Methodist Church on Friday, December 1st at 7:00 pm in the Sanctuary! This is the first concert to be held after the completion of the recent organ renovations and promises to be a wonderful evening of music. We invite you for a pre-concert reception in the Fellowship Hall at 6:00 pm.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Daryl Robinson has earned international acclaim from critics and audiences alike, being described as an artist with “… a driving muscular poetry underpinned by nimble technique and nuanced sense of style …” (Choir and Organ) and possessing “… flawless technique and rhythmic verve …” (The American Organist).  Winner of both First Prize and Audience Prize in the 2012 American Guild of Organists National Competition in Organ Performance, he has since maintained an active career as a recitalist, collaborative artist, church musician, and educator.  Mr. Robinson began his teaching career on the faculty of Westminster Choir College and currently serves as Assistant Professor of Organ at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music.

Notable recital venues include the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, and the Spreckels Organ Pavilion.  Mr. Robinson has also been a featured artist at conventions of the Organ Historical Society (2018) and the American Guild of Organists (2014, 2015, and 2016).  His collaborative career has included performances with the GRAMMY®-winning Houston Chamber Choir and Houston Symphony, and he is a frequent collaborator with the GRAMMY®-nominated Ars Lyrica Houston.  In 2016 he served as Organist-in-Residence for the Choral Institute at the University of Oxford in the U.K. and in 2019 on the Audition Jury for the Longwood Gardens International Organ Competition.

Multiple critically-acclaimed commercial discs are available; these include the first commercial recording of the organ at Walt Disney Concert Hall, American Fantasia (2018, Gothic Records), and his debut solo album, Sempre Organo (2013, ProOrgano Records), both of which have garnered rave reviews internationally.  Mr. Robinson’s performances are routinely featured on nationally syndicated radio programs, including Pipedreams® and With Heart and Voice. Mr. Robinson recorded A Love So Fierce: The Complete Solo Organ Music of David Ashley White (2021, Acis Productions), the first commercial recording of the organ at Christ Church Cathedral, Houston.  Collaborative recordings include Carolae – Music for Christmas (2016, Naxos Records), recorded with the GRAMMY®-nominated Williamson Voices of Westminster Choir College.  Committed to routinely commissioning and recording new music for the organ, Robinson has commissioned Rachel Laurin, Aaron David Miller, Jason Roberts, George Baker, Tom Trenney, David Briggs, and David Ashley White to write music for him.

A passionate educator committed to training young organists for careers as soloists and effective collaborative musicians, his students currently hold many prestigious church positions and routinely concertize across the U.S.  The University of Houston’s Faculty Senate honored his research and teaching by featuring him on the Assistant Professor of Excellence Lecture Series in the 2021-22 academic year.  In 2019, Robinson served as Director of the American Guild of Organists’ Pipe Organ Encounter Advanced, a summer program focused on young organists entering grades 9 through 12 and currently serves on the AGO National Committee on the New Organist.  Holding degrees from the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston and the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, Robinson’s studies were directed by distinguished instructors, including Robert Bates, Ken Cowan, and David Higgs, who impressed upon him the importance of using his gifts and talents in service to others.

Mr. Robinson is represented in North America by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc.  Further information, including recordings and current engagements, can be found at www.darylrobinson.com.

What the experts are saying… 

DALLAS    (The Catholic Church of St. Monica) “The new four-manual organ, by the Little Rock firm Nichols & Simpson … was vividly displayed Friday night in a recital by Daryl Robinson.  On Robinson’s program the organ was most at home in the first movement of Elgar’s Organ Sonata and the atmospheric impressionism of Siegfrid Karg-Elert’s Harmonies du soir and a Lullaby from Calvin Hampton’s Suite No. 2.  In the Elgar, Robinson cycled through a kaleidoscope of registration changes worthy of Elgar’s brilliantly orchestrated symphonies.  If you’ll pardon a mixed metaphor, rich steak-and-kidney-pie sonories alternated with an amazing variety of piquancies.  The Karg-Elert brought forth purring strings, warm flutes and an English horn stop.  Pierre Cochereau’s Scherzo symphonique, transcribed by Jeremy Filsell from a recorded 1974 improvisation, was a showpiece of skipping iambs, great and small, dispatched with no hint of effort.  If anyone still doubted Robinson’s first-class virtuosity, he dispelled any questions in a demonically brilliant account of “Tierces,” from British organist David Briggs’ 2005 Four Concert Etudes.”

Scott Cantrell, The Dallas Morning News, April 2015

MILWAUKEE   (Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist) “Daryl Robinson, recent winner of the AGO national competition, gave a program at the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist, Milwaukee, and did a wonderful, musical, and virtuosic job of managing a wonderful two-organ installation in our magnificent Cathedral … Daryl’s musicianship and virtuosity are amazing – not just a fast-fingered young guy that can pull off the Dupré B major, Heiller’s Tanz-Toccata, and the Liszt B-A-C-H, he made incredible warm music and sound with the Franck B Minor Chorale!  What a wonderful range … He was certainly the best performer in recent memory in his wonderful sense of ingenious and tasteful use of the resources of both instruments … All in all, a memorable event, with venue, instruments, and performer working together very nicely.”

John Sebolt, Milwaukee AGO newsletter Pipe-Notes, October 2012

CLEVELAND   (Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist) “Robinson used the resources of the organ effectively … His playing [of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in F Major, BWV 540] was precise and secure and the long pedal solos were spectacular … [His] performance [of Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H] caught the improvisatory nature of the piece, with its striking registrational changes and adventurous harmonies … Robinson easily conquered all of Liszt’s pianistic technical demands … [For his] encore, Paul Halley’s Outer Hebrides, … Robinson made good use of the antiphonal possibilities of the cathedral’s organ … He is already a very proficient and talented young artist; he has a bright career ahead.”

Timothy Robson, ClevelandClassical.com, October 2012

CLEVELAND   (Cleveland Museum of Art) “Daryl Robinson … played a very stylish Böhm prelude and fugue, with well-considered ornamentation and a tempo that sparkled, but was not so fast that the counterpoint was muddy.  His performance of the Bach chorale prelude Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, BWV 676, was a model of musical playing, brisk tempo and an excellent sense of pulse.  His version of Heiller’s Tanz-Toccata enabled clarity in hearing the many meter changes and repeated notes.  His was top-notch, mature playing.”

Timothy Robson, ClevelandClassical.com, May 2012

RECORDING REVIEWS

American Fantasia (Gothic-49315) Recorded on the Glatter-Götz/Rosales Organ of Walt Disney Concert Hall

“What a knockout this disc is! The program assembled here is one of the most cogently and creatively conceived recital programs for any instrument I’ve encountered in quite a while.”   

“The execution of all of these pieces by Daryl Robinson is dazzling.  His technique is prodigious, his ear for appropriate registrations is acute, and he is perfectly attuned to all the highly varied stylistic requirements of this diverse program.  The resources of the iconic Glatter-Getz/Rosales Organ of the Walt Disney Concert Hall are deftly exploited to the full. and the proceedings are captured in brilliantly vivid and clear sound. … This release is a total delight; urgently and enthusiastically recommended.”        

James A. Altena, Fanfare, May/June 2019

“Flights of fantasy abound; Daryl Robinson presents a program that is as beautifully varied and balanced as it is brilliantly performed. …Daryl Robinson, Assistant Professor an Organ Studies for the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music and organist at Houston’s Christ Church Cathedral, is clearly a virtuoso. …  “The recording has terrific presence; Daryl Robinson’s championing of this music is clearly the stuff of passion.”

Colin Clarke, Fanfare, May/June 2019

Sempre Organo (ProOrgano) Recorded 2013 on the Fisk/Rosales organ at Rice University, Houston

“Here’s a fine solo debut on disc by the young American Daryl Robinson, a double-prize winner at the 2012 American Guild of Organists’ National Young Artists Competition.  His playing is characterised by a driving muscular poetry underpinned by nimble technique and nuanced sense of style.  There’s a marvelously controlled flamboyance to Liszt’s combustible BACH Prelude and Fugue, while Cochereau’s chiaroscuro Scherzo symphonique is realised with painterly detail.  Dandrieu’s gorgeous Offertoire pour le jour de Pâques: O filii et filiae glows with filigreed finesse; Karg-Elert’s Harmonies du shoir is suitably twilit and mysterious.  Add in secure readings of Franck, Bach, Heiller, and David Ashley White, and Daryl Robinson set his stall out with winning aplomb.”

Michael Quinn, Choir and Organ Magazine, March/April 2014