Composers

Jean-Baptiste Robin is regarded as one of the most prominent French composer and concert organist of his generation.

He has composed over forty works ranging from those for solo instruments to symphony orchestra and his works have been performed by various ensembles such as the Orchestre National de France, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Colonne Orchestra, Pays-de-Savoie Orchestra, the Maitrise de Notre-Dame de Paris, under the batons of conductors Laurent Petitgirard, Roberto Fores Veres and Jean Deroyer, and performers including François Salque and Xavier Phillips, cello, David Guerrier and Romain Leleu, trumpet, François Chaplin, piano, and many organists. He received many important commissions including a work for the Ensemble intercontemporain commissionned and conducted by Pierre Boulez in 2010 for his 85th birthday. His powerful and inspired music ”expresses, shows, tells and gives to imagine ... by the use of symmetrical modes of his own and called” reflective ”. [...] It lays the foundations of a large and stable universe and invents a singular and immediately recognizable color ”(Michel Gribenski). In 2017 he was awarded composer of the year from the Belgium Radio and in 2018 he wons the Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs in Radio France for his work Mechanic Fantasy.
In 2006, he composes Reflected Faces for members of the London Philharmonia Orchestra in London for the serie Music of Today at the Royal Festival Hall.
In 2008, his cycle Cercles Réfléchissants for organ was performes in many European countries and in the U.S.A.
In 2010, he composed Distances for chamber orchestra, commission from the Ensemble intercontemporain, first performed and conducted by Pierre Boulez and the l’Ensemble intercontemporain in salle Pleyel, for the 85th birthday of the conductor and composer.
In 2012, his work Crop Circles is first performed by the Orchestre National de France and Mechanic Fantasy for organ, strings an timpani (2013) is wins the Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs en 2018.
From 2014 to 2017 he composes chamber music for musicians such as François Salque (Trois Nuits, Bagatelle), Romain Leleu (Récits Héroïques, Chant de l’Âme) and Ellipsos quartet (Pulse).

His frequent performance trips have vielded recitals in 15 European countries, in Russia, in Israël, in Asia (Japan, South Korea and China), in Canada and in nearly half of the fifty states in the United States of America. He has been a featured recitalist at well-known international concert halls at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Woolsey Hall in New Haven, the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Sejong Cultural Center in Seoul, Korea, and the Forbidden City and the National Centre of Performing Arts in Beijing, China.
In Europe Jean-Baptiste Robin performed in international festivals in Haarlem, Toulouse-les-orgues, Masevaux, Saintes, Madrid, Montserrat, Bonn, Dresden, Freiberg, Timisoara among many others. In France he was invited in famous churches like Notre-Dame, Saint-Sulpice and Saint-Eustache in Paris, and European cathedrals in Cologne, Geneva, Porto, Monaco and also in Poitiers where he was appointed organist of the world-known François-Henri Clicquot organ from 2000-2010.
With his appointment in 2010 as Organist of the Royal Chapel at the Palace of Versailles, Jean-Baptiste Robin was secured a place in a long line of famous French organists and composers, such as François Couperin, Louis Marchand, Louis-Claude Daquin, and Claude Balbastre. He also serves as Professor of Composition and Organ at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional in Versailles.

As a master teacher, he was a distinguished artist-in-residence at Yale University and several times professor at the International Summer Academy in Haarlem (Holland), and he has taught numerous master classes in numerous universities and conservatories in the U.S. including the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (Ohio). He teaches for the Royaumont Seminar and he was also Jury member at the Canadian International Organ Competition in Montréal in 2017, the biggest organ competition in the world.

He has recorded the complete works of Jehan Alain (Brilliant Classics), Felix Mendelssohn, Louis Marchand (Triton), and François Couperin as well as his own compositions. These recordings have been consistently praised by music critics and have won numerous prizes in France and England, including several Golden Diapason, the Editor’s Choice by Gramophone, the Charles Cros Academy and the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik Vierteljahresliste.

Jean-Baptiste Robin studied at the National Superior Conservatory of Music in Paris, winning seven Premier Prix and two postgraduate diplomas in theory and organ performance. He studied the organ with Marie-Claire Alain, Olivier Latry, Michel Bouvard, and Louis Robilliard, and composition with George Benjamin at King’s College, London.

-----------------------------------2016

> News

- CD release: 5 versets sur le “Veni Creator” for grand organ, by the composer, for the label Aeolus (AE 11101).

- Hervé Dugardin Prize of the Sacem.

-----------------------------------2017

> News

- Monographic CD release: Mechanic fantasy, for orchestra, with the Orchestra of Basse Normandie, under the direction of Jean Deroyer, Récits héroïques, for trumpet and organ, by Romain Leleu (trumpet), and Trois solos et 5 versets sur le Veni Creator, for grand organ, by the composer, for the label Brillant Classics - 95479.

-----------------------------------2018

> Premieres

05/07/18
THE HANDS OF TIME, for organ
Todd Wilson
National Convention - Kansas City (Missouri) - USA

> News

- Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs 2018.
^{Mechanic Fantasy, for orchestra
Orchestre de Basse Normandie - Cond.: Jean Deroyer
Brillant Classics - 95479.}

- CD release: Pulse for saxophone quartet, by Quatuor Ellipsos, for the label NoMadMusic - NMM047.

-----------------------------------2019

> Premieres

04/04/19
LA LAME DES HEURES, for orchestra
Orchestre national de France - Cond.: Marin Alsop
Auditorium de Radio France, Maison de la Radio - Paris - France

09/06/19
CHANT DU TENERE, for organ
Henri-Franck Beaupérin
Abbaye - Sylvanès - France

> News

- Professor of composition at the CRR of Versailles (France).

-----------------------------------2020

> Premieres

12/07/20
ZENITH, for string orchestra and 2 oboes
Orchestre des Pays de Savoie - Oboes: Yann Thenet and Hugues Lachaize
Cond.: Nicolas Chalvin