A Life In Music: Mark Robinson. 40 years at the CBSO

40 Years at the CBSO, the Fiddle in 'Fiddle and Bone', dangerous flirtations with rock ...

I owe a debt of gratitude to a great Birmingham muso, R. John Webb (aka Ryan Webb, late of Rhino and the Ranters), who, when learning that I wanted to find a Classical muso for this series, suggested I talk to Foxy... a pal of his from Moseley, the proudly boho bit of Brum.  

'Foxy who?' I ask.

'Oh, I don't know his real name. But he's Classical' says Ryan.

'That can cover a lot of things. Which orchestra?' say I.

'Oh, the Rattle one' came the reply.

That started my pursuit. In due course we met up in one of Moseley's nicer coffee joints, and talked for hours. Clearly I was being sized up. But in due course, Foxy - Mark Robinson - who will absolutely not tell me why he has that nickname, agreed to be interviewed. 

So now, a detailed and fascinating conversation...

And the result is this podcast episode. You can jump to my podcast host to stream or download here, or you can head down to the bottom of this post to listen now.  

Very precise detail is what Mark goes for.  We covered an enormous range of topics. But as always in this series, if you put forty or fifty years into your craft, then you have the stories and experience.

The conversation gave me a chance to look at the life of a musician in a BIG outfit. Orchestras can run to 90 or more, so touring a band like that is a bit more than assembling a road crew. The logistics must be a nightmare.

The Prince of Wales

The Prince of Wales in Moseley, Birmingham has played a considerable part in this podcast episode. The Prince is a Moseley musicians' watering hole, with a long history of live music, and in whose snug we captured most of the conversation. 

Mark made mention of a benefit which took place in 2005. This was for the legendary Steve Ajao, whose podcast episode is here. I am indebted to Reed Alan, who filmed the benefit performance, and who has kindly allowed me to embed this video clip here.

Lives in Music

The Lives in Music podcasts celebrates people who have spent a lifetime in music. They may be famous; they may be people who have spent their lives working in the background for the love of it. But they all have stories. Listen here:




The intro and outro music in this series comes from the great bass player Mike Hatton, who you can hear interviewed in series 1, here. 'Everything Changes' is included in his excellent 2019 album 'Bassic Salvation'. Follow the album link for more :-)

Published in Series 2  (series 1 episodes listed here)

1 - Brian Travers of UB40
2 - Ricky Cool
3 - Mark 'Foxy' Robinson of the CBSO
4 - Roy Adams
5 - Gavin Monaghan of Magic Garden studios 
6 - John Mostyn
7 - Stewart Johnson: taking UK Country back across the pond
8 - Dave Pegg of Fairport Convention
9 - Roy Willams (JB's, Little Acre, Weapon of Peace, Robert Plant)

10 - Simon Duggal (Simon & Diamond, Apache Indian, Shania Twain, Desi Beats)

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Crowd Out: The people running the biggest Birmingham choir ever

I've decided to participate in a HUGE event: Crowd Out. It's a new piece from New York composer David Lang. I will be one of a thousand voices singing and declaiming my head off. 

It's a world première. It's twenty groups of fifty people singing and shouting and giving out, arranged across four levels in Millennium point in Birmingham. It's insane, it's demanding, it's an adventure. It's going to happen in June this year. 

It's free to watch. Anyone can join in, including you. But you've got to do some rehearsing. 

I'm going to post closer to the date with something detailed about the process and the involvement. How are the rehearsals going to work? In the meantime I've got two of the people involved who are building all this: Simon Halsey and Clare Edwards. They both run choirs. 

Arts Funding: it's DIFFERENT in Germany. A chat with Simon Halsey, CBSO Chorus Master

I first met Simon Halsey 32 years ago, when he joined the team at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Now, he is the CBSO Chorus Master. This summer, he leads an extravagant public participation project, Crowd Out, taking over Millennium Point with a thousand, count 'em, a thousand, singers. I'm in: there's a blog post to come on this later this year. 

Halsey at TEDx, Berlin 2010. Photo Sebastian Gabsch

At rehearsals, he flipped from English to German with ease, the result of working in Berlin for the past 15 years. He is ferociously busy, about to swap the Berlin Philharmonic Chorus, Germany's top choir, for the London Symphony equivalent. His job is Chorus Master, but in reality it's a lot more. He has deep knowledge of funding, and, critically, of how organisations can survive and prosper, re-inventing themselves, burrowing deep into in the communities they serve, with humility and practical intent. 

So, he is an interesting and political man, as well as a committed musician with a unique perspective.UK Arts and Media institutions could do well to study how the CBSO, with his help, has played its hand over the past three decades. There are profound lessons to learn. 

CBSO and ADO. A tale of two Orchestras

They both absolutely rock. We should be proud of both bands.

We have great orchestras in Birmingham.  Why, I saw two this week. Now, I just may have been the only person who attended both of these gigs, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see other kindred spirits: the music making was equally passionate and fulfilling, and the audiences welcoming and knowledgeable.

Wednesday night was the CBSO, rollicking through Mahler 9 and a brilliant contemporary piece, Kai, from Mark Anthony Turnage. Top notch delivery from all concerned, brilliant Symphony Hall acoustics, and a few members of the audience I would have tipped off the top balcony had I been able to reach them when they coughed or sneezed during the final movement.

Thursday night was the ebullient and witty Mama Matrix - I’d never seen them before, and I loved them to bits - and the third public gig from the Alternative Dubstep Orchestra, at a seething Hare and Hounds in King’s Heath.

Seething is actually the right word. I’ve never seen an entire audience go bonkers in quite such a complex and bendy-twisty way. If was if the crowd turned into a collective skanking jelly. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of this is due to the extraordinary heroics of guitarist Tom Hyland, who plays and dances with huge expressive freedom. But you simply can not single out anyone from this collective. The mix and approach are so infectious, and the shifts and splits in direction are fresh and mesmerising. I am deeply impressed. I love catching a band as it locks into something new and individual and unique. This was one of those moments. And they’ve hardly got started.

So who are these guys? Well, the full details are on their facebook page, but simply put, they are a live mash-up of genres, with stupefyingly good live djs (last night, Malicious DJ and The Doctor, with an appearance from Maxwell 45) and brio musicianship and skills from a multiplicity of music disciplines. Some musicians – they all play with other outfits - rotate in and out, and they plan for flexibility and surprises, underpinned with a solid sense of structure and purpose. There is a very early video available for you to watch, but it cannot capture what they do live. And a mixed multicultural band draws a multicultural crowd, who as I’ve already said, mashed themselves up into a pulsing, oozing, frenzy. In some ways, the gig  reminded me of the Rock Against Racism gigs of 30 years ago – but here, the driving force was the sheer pleasure of experimental music making, powered by the purest idealism and goodwill.

This is very new and very vital, and I urge you to check them out. They play monthly gigs (so far), at the Honeycomb Club nights at the Hare and Hounds in King’s Heath, with intensive rehearsals in between time. The set is brief – four or five numbers - but those numbers are extended work outs which stretch the band and the audience.

Huge props to all concerned, not least the unstoppable Shelley Atkinson and Karl 'Malicious DJ' Jones, who dreamed up the concept, and then charmed, cajoled and bullied the project to its feet and into vibrant life. Respect and admiration doesn’t begin to cover it. And many thanks to Richard Shakespeare for the use of his picture