Larry Rothe
I always identified Robin with the San Francisco Symphony, which I think is how he identified himself. In February 1983, just recently arrived in the Bay Area, I attended my first San Francisco Symphony concert. My wife and I sat way up in the second tier, and as the musicians gathered on stage, she pointed out the pianist, his long ponytail making him a doppelgänger for the superintendent of the Berkeley apartment building where we lived. A year later, I found myself working at the Symphony, and I met that pianist, whose ponytail was the one thing he and our building super had in common. At that time, Robin had been with the orchestra almost ten years, and when I left the Symphony in 2013 he remained there still. In fact my Symphony time is bookended by Robin. He was among the first to welcome me—he always had a kind word for staff members and never thought of us as those anonymous people upstairs—and at my retirement party he treated me and all present to some lovely music, William Bolcom’s “The Graceful Ghost,” a dreamy, wistful piece that meant a lot to him, so aptly did it reflect who he was, someone who’d had his share of bad times but remained hopeful. As a young man Robin had to fight to become who he was. When he arrived inside his own skin, he inhabited it fully, joyfully determined to live an expansive life and share his sense of delight with anyone lucky enough to occupy airspace with him.
Robin brightened any day with his easy genius, verbal acrobatics, gifts (books, in my case, and orange Starburst candy, my favorite), and endless store of off-color jokes, always delivered with an elegance and inevitability that made you believe you could share them with your grandmother. Incredible that those jokes came from a mind that also dug into the mysteries of Mozart and J.S. Bach, although those guys weren’t exactly saints, either. At the end of 1992, Robin and I shared bereavements when our mothers died within a few days of each other. I wrote him a note he said touched him. And when I arrived at the chapel for my mother’s memorial service, I discovered a beautiful flower arrangement on the altar. It was from Robin—a moving and consoling gesture, and completely typical.
I’m richer for having known you, mein lieber Freund, and the world is richer for the time you spent in it.