Robin Bushman and Christopher Oldfather

We are honored to announce having violinist Robin Bushman and pianist Christopher Oldfather perform at the Center for a special holiday event. They will be performing works by Debussey and Prokoviev as well as others to be announced. This is a Friends of Classical Music performance for 2025. Please join us.  

The Program (more tba)

• Sonata for Violin and Piano Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
• Violin Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 94a Sergei Prokofiev (1891—1953)

A Cleveland native, Robin Bushman began her musical studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music which honored her with the 1992 Alumni Achievement Award. A three-time concerto winner at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan, she received her Bachelor's Degree from Oberlin College and a Master's Degree from The Juilliard School where she studied with Oscar Shumsky.

In 2005, Ms. Bushman appeared with the Long Island Philharmonic in a performance of the Bach Concerto for Three Violins. She was a soloist in "The Four Seasons" of Vivaldi with the Orchestra of St. Luke's in Monterrey, Mexico, and has performed on the Second Helpings Series with St. Luke's.

During 2006, Robin was a soloist with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and appeared with members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at the OK Mozart Festival in Oklahoma. In 2009, she accompanied Michel Legrand at "Birdland" in New York City as part of a string quartet.

Ms. Bushman is a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke's and serves as assistant concertmaster of the Westchester Philharmonic. A founding member of the Portsmouth Chamber Ensemble, she debuted at Weill Concert Hall in New York, having won the Artist's International competition. She has toured extensively with the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, St. Luke's, and the New York Philharmonic.

Robin is happily married to Dr. Robert Fried, professor emeritus, City University of New York.

Christopher Oldfather has devoted himself to the performance of twentieth-century music for more than thirty years. He has participated in innumerable world-premiere performances, in every possible combination of instruments, in cities all over America. The Westchester Philharmonic's Principal Keyboardist for twenty-two years, he has also been a member of Boston's Collage New Music since 1979, New York City's Parnassus since 1997, appears regularly in Chicago, and as a collaborator has joined singers and instrumentalists of all kinds in recitals throughout the United States.

In 1986 he presented his recital debut in Carnegie Recital Hall, and since then he has pursued a career as a freelance musician. This work has taken him as far afield as Moscow and Tokyo, and he has worked on every sort of keyboard ever made, even including the Chromelodeon. He is widely known for his expertise on the harpsichord, and is one of the leading interpreters of twentieth-century works for that instrument. As a soloist he has appeared with the MET Chamber Players, the San Francisco Symphony, and Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, Germany.

His recording of Elliott Carter's violin-piano Duo with Robert Mann was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 1990. He has collaborated with the conductor Robert Craft, and can be heard on several of his recordings.

Christopher Oldfather was nominated for a 2010 Grammy in the Best Chamber Music Performance category for Schoenberg: String Quartets Nos. 3 & 4 with the Fred Sherry String Quartet.