ROBIN SPIELBERG composer/pianist

CLICK TO WATCH IT HERE

Five years ago I was on tour in California and, to promote the tour, I made an appearance on live radio. KPIG is known for its live-in-studio interviews, and the hosts there are open to all kinds of music. I was thrilled they were interested in having me. Since the studio was small, I agreed to performing live on air on an 88-key weighted keyboard. The engineer worked hard so that the sound was great over the radio waves.

What I didn’t know was that there was going to be a TWELVE-PIECE western band needing to set up DURING MY INTERVIEW in the very small space in which I was playing, since they were playing next. The keyboard was plugged right into the radio feed, so no one listening over the air at home or in their cars could hear all the background noise, but it was incredibly funny. I tried my best to focus on my playing but there was so much going on, it was quite a battle. EVERYONE was talking while I was playing live on air: the hosts, the crew, the other musicians. The band argued over where certain gear should go and their manager was yelling at them to hurry up. 

This video shows the brief interview and the performance segment. If you close your eyes, you just hear the music—but when you look at the video you can clearly see all that was going on behind the scenes in radio land. It was fun to watch this after five years and relive the craziness of that day.

xo Robin

I snapped this photo on the way to the bank yesterday. I am thinking about all the times I ran that errand.

I remember being a little girl and holding my mother’s hand as we walked to the bank in Irvington, NJ. I was too shy to ask for a lollipop so I just hoped and prayed the bank teller would notice me and give me one.

Living in Manhattan, going to the bank usually meant a long wait on line. It was the time before smartphones; I usually read a book waiting for my turn. I banked at Manufacturers Hanover because that’s where my Dad told me to go.

In Montclair, NJ where I lived for 15 years after Manhattan, banking was easy, but finding a parking spot in town was not.

And now I am in rural PA and there is rarely a line at the bank. The best part of the errand is the journey through the fields. In summer the corn is high; in Autumn it is gold. And now the corn is down and you can see forever. I like the journey. xo Robin

When I was a little girl, my mother and I would take walks to collect the colorful autumn leaves that had fallen to the ground. I placed my carefully selected maple, elm, pear, oak and walnut leaves into a plastic bag. They were orange, yellow, crimson, red, green and gold. When we got home we’d find the biggest books in the house, usually the dictionary and a few encyclopedias and we’d place the leaves in between the pages. Weeks later, we’d take them out to admire them.  A few times in school our class would iron the leaves we had collected in between pieces of wax paper and display them on the windows of our classroom. The pieces were so beautiful when the sun shined through.

When I was a teenager, my mind turned to a different kind of Autumn Leaves, as in the song by Roger Williams. Alan Wolfe, my piano teacher, showed me a billion ways that song could be arranged: as a classical piece, a jazz standard, as swing, as pop, as a rock anthem. It was a “flexible” song, and enduring song and just as colorful as the leaves I had collected as a young girl.

Roger Williams died this weekend. He was an amazing pianist and composer and his legacy will live on, long after the colors of Autumn have faded.

CLICK HERE for the newsletter

(tour dates, sale codes on sheet music & CDs)