Robert Gibson

Flux and Fire

Since the 1980s, Robert Gibson has been working behind the scenes (or at least upstage) – as an accomplished jazz and orchestral bass player, and as School of Music Director at the University of Maryland. He has also been an active composer (his electroacoustic music, for instance, can be heard on National Geographic’s Explorer series). So it is high time he came center stage and we had a chance to hear his own chamber music. Flux and Fire features Gibson’s works for stringed instruments that were inspired by poetry. The fluid boundaries between music and poetry as art – and to specific poems as inspiration for instrumental music – is a deeply personal one for the composer and is a defining characteristic of much of his music.