Pianist Robert Buxton brings music from the past to life today as a performer and public speaker. He offers a unique lecture-recital combination to retirement communities, association meetings, private events, schools, and universities. He makes piano music accessible and enjoyable to everyone by explaining the history of each piece, what to listen for, and through stories, humor, and personal anecdotes.
Recently, he has presented programs on Vienna, on Chopin, on Still and Price, and on Liszt for Carolina Public Humanities (UNC Chapel Hill), an all-Russian program for the department of Germanic and Slavic Languages at Person Hall (UNC), solo, chamber, and new music performances at East Carolina University, and other programs at Cherry Hill (Inez, N.C), the Governors Club, Carol Woods, Galloway Ridge, and the Siena Hotel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed in New York (Symphony Space, the YIVO institute, Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Spanish Consulate, and Steinway Hall), Europe (Scuola di Musica in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, Italy, the Maison Erard in Amsterdam) and in Japan, (Sakata, Kyoto, and Tokyo). His interviews and recordings have been featured on major classical radio stations in New York City and Kyoto.
Robert has been on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at East Carolina University. He studied under Vladimir Viardo at the University of North Texas (M.M. and D.M.A. degrees) and with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music (B.M. degree). His doctoral dissertation involved the philosophy of Henri Bergson as a mode of interpreting nostalgia in the piano music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, and he continues to write about music in a personal idiom.
Robert is passionate about less well-known repertoire of all eras and new music, particularly U.S. composers William Grant Still, Charles Ives, Florence Price, and Roy Harris. He often includes southern gospel improvisations at concerts.
Also a composer and arranger, he frequently performs his own transcriptions of Mahalia Jackson’s gospel recordings, an elegiac piano sonata, “Freedom Summer—Mississippi 1964,” short pieces based on Jack Kerouac’s Haikus, free arrangements of medieval chants, and big-band arrangements (Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller especially).
He lives in Mebane, NC with his wife Shoko Abe, also a pianist, their two sons, and two cats.
Recently, he has presented programs on Vienna, on Chopin, on Still and Price, and on Liszt for Carolina Public Humanities (UNC Chapel Hill), an all-Russian program for the department of Germanic and Slavic Languages at Person Hall (UNC), solo, chamber, and new music performances at East Carolina University, and other programs at Cherry Hill (Inez, N.C), the Governors Club, Carol Woods, Galloway Ridge, and the Siena Hotel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed in New York (Symphony Space, the YIVO institute, Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Spanish Consulate, and Steinway Hall), Europe (Scuola di Musica in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, Italy, the Maison Erard in Amsterdam) and in Japan, (Sakata, Kyoto, and Tokyo). His interviews and recordings have been featured on major classical radio stations in New York City and Kyoto.
Robert has been on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at East Carolina University. He studied under Vladimir Viardo at the University of North Texas (M.M. and D.M.A. degrees) and with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music (B.M. degree). His doctoral dissertation involved the philosophy of Henri Bergson as a mode of interpreting nostalgia in the piano music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, and he continues to write about music in a personal idiom.
Robert is passionate about less well-known repertoire of all eras and new music, particularly U.S. composers William Grant Still, Charles Ives, Florence Price, and Roy Harris. He often includes southern gospel improvisations at concerts.
Also a composer and arranger, he frequently performs his own transcriptions of Mahalia Jackson’s gospel recordings, an elegiac piano sonata, “Freedom Summer—Mississippi 1964,” short pieces based on Jack Kerouac’s Haikus, free arrangements of medieval chants, and big-band arrangements (Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller especially).
He lives in Mebane, NC with his wife Shoko Abe, also a pianist, their two sons, and two cats.
