Andrew Robinson

I began playing the ukulele in the mid-1950s

At the age of ten I moved on to the guitar and by twenty to the viola da gamba

My songs can be heard below and my sons' songs can be heard here

Current Work

• Music typesetter and editor; see Smoot below
• Director of The Dublin Viols and occasional performer with other period-instrument groups including The Irish Baroque Orchestra
• Teacher of viola da gamba and renaissance music theory in The DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama as well as teaching the ukulele and viola da gamba to private pupils

Smoot

• The composer Eric Sweeney (orchestral score and parts for the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra)
• Professor Barra Boydell (orchestral score of his edition of "Caractacus" by the Earl of Mornington, for the RTÉ Concert Orchestra)
• The pianist Una Hunt (transpositions for the Moore's Irish Melodies project and CD set)

Contact Information

Biographical Information

• Born 1948 in Dublin, educated at Mountjoy School (since renamed Mount Temple) in Dublin followed by two years in Sevenoaks School Kent
• BA Mod in philosophy (quaintly known as Mental and Moral Science) and Mus B at Trinity College Dublin where I was taught Bach's counterpoint by Joseph Groocock
• LRAM in guitar teaching
• LTCL in viola da gamba teaching
• MA in renaissance music at Queen's University Belfast under Ian Woodfield

• Playing, singing, and composing in a progressive poetry-and-music group Tara Telephone, with poets Peter Fallon and Eamon Carr, singer Lucienne Purcell, and guitarist/composers Declan Sinnott and Bernie Barrett. Eamon and Declan went on to invent Celtic Rock in Horslips, around 1970
• Teaching guitar and viola da gamba at the Royal Irish Academy of Music
• Co-directing the Consort of St Sepulchre, a Medieval/Renaissance band that recorded two albums with EMI Ireland in the mid 1970s
• Making stringed instruments (with Anthony OBrien)
• Conducting (Dublin Youth Orchestras, Dublin Orchestral Players, and others; founding chairman of the Irish Association of Youth Orchestras)
• Lecturing on renaissance music in TCD
• Teaching in the Orpheon summer schools in the Czech Republic, run by José Vázquez, through most of the noughties

Compositions

• Incidental music for theatre:
  • “Twelfth Night” Peacock Theatre 1976
  • “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” Abbey Theatre 1987
  • “Dark Lady” Peacock Theatre 1988
  • “The Ring of Mont de Balison” Ranelagh Community Theatre 1988
• Other compositions:
  • “Zeralda's Ogre” for orchestra with narrator, performed by RTÉ Concert Orchestra Dublin Proms 1993
  • “Fudge” for SATB or recorder quartet, published in "A Musical Tribute to Joseph Groocock", TCD School of Music, 1993
  • String quartets for children: “Eileen Aroon”, “Ní Mór Dom É”, “Morning”, “In a Place”, “The Daniel Day”—for Dublin Youth Orchestras Summer Courses
• Songs: see below

Publications

• Various entries in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland (UCD Press, ?2010)
• Chapter on “Narcissus Marsh, Ground-breaking Bishop” in Music, Ireland and the Seventeenth Century (Four Courts Press, April 2009). This book, the tenth volume in the series Irish Musical Studies, was reviewed with the accolades of four stars and 'Editor's Choice' on 9 June 2009 in Classical Music magazine
• Chapter on “Choice Psalmes: A Brother’s Memorial” in William Lawes: his life, times and work (Ashgate 1999)
• Entry on “The Three Ages of Music” in The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, (Cork University Press 1999)
• Transcriptions of traditional music in The Northern Fiddler (Blackstaff Press Belfast 1979)
• Viol consort music by William Cranford (Viola da Gamba Society, 1970s) edited from the part-books in Marsh's Library

Some Links

• Recumbent bikes
• Rainbows
• Rimickles
• The Three Ages of Music
• My philosophical heroes, Berkeley and Wittgenstein
• Sol-fa
• Gambling
• How Shakespeare gave a name to Irish pipes

• The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form where again I am known as Recumbentman. This is a group of people writing, yes, a full dictionary in limericks . . .
• The Ballad of Grimly Moer (possibly the world's longest and weirdest nonsense ballad)
• Make anagrams of your name—you may call me Ron Rainbowsend
• Two friends who are viola da gamba players based in Amsterdam: Nicholas Milne and Susanne Braumann

Personal Interests

• Member of the Green Party; my sincere hope is that all political parties will become equally green, as voters increasingly compel them to
• Member of the Gaudete Singers; I am a BWTSTP (baritone willing to sing tenor parts)
• Recumbent cyclist; proud rider of a PDQ on which I have done a thousand-mile trip through France, a 1400-mile trip via Cherbourg and Copenhagen to Malmö, a longer trip up the east coast of Sweden, and shorter ones from the north of Spain down to Lisbon, from Dublin to Glasgow via Belfast, and up and down the Yorkshire Dales and Moors; all without a trace of saddle-sore, thanks to the wonder that is the Recumbent Bike Seat
• Member of Dublin Cycling Campaign
  • Read about the cycle-helmet question here
  • —and my suggested answer here

Songs

• Chimpanzee Song
• Alexander Frink and Son which had its first public performance at the Ukulele Hooley in Temple Bar on the 16th of August 2009
• Learner Driver