Posts in review
2022-2023 Season Announcement

Hi friends,

Hope you all have been able to stay cool for this scorcher of a summer! I was lucky enough to make a quick trip to Finland for a performance of my new Endless Landscape at Avanti's Summer Sounds festival, followed by a short visit to MASS MoCA for a stellar performance of An Economy of Means by Doug Perkins at the Bang on a Can Loud weekend, and finally an amazing week in Del Mar, California, teaching at the Del Mar International Composers Symposium. As we head into the fall, I'm excited to give you a season preview and share some new music, upcoming performances and albums in the works.

If you've been following my Facebook Page or Twitter, you'll know that my score for The Real Charlie Chaplin was honored with a News & Documentary Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Music Composition! It continues to be a fun adventure and hope to be able to share more news about the soundtrack soon.

No Exit New Music will premiere a new work of mine for soprano and chamber ensemble in April, and you can check out the ever-expanding season calendar here.

For all the saxophonists and sax/perc. duos out there, Echolocate for alto/soprano sax and marimba is now available for purchase. More info here.

Lastly, an album featuring my An Index of Possibility, Down Down Baby, and Lost and Found, will be released in the spring, with superb performances by TIGUE, New Morse Code, and Michael Compitello. More info coming soon.


Other News

  • Check out new score follow videos of Olmsted and Arctic, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for new releases.

  • Other Sheet Music Releases: Evergreen for two percussionists and Endless Landscape for eleven instruments are both now available in PDF and Print Formats.

  • Alysa Pires's choreography to Conduit: II. Pulse will be programmed by the Alberta Ballet in the Fall. Tickets here.


thanks for tuning in,
Robert

 
January Newsletter

“Beautiful music from Robert Honstein and some handsome cinematography by James Blann for the cleverly deployed reenactments do a lot to drive this narrative forward.”

— DAN MECCA, THE FILM STAGE

Happy New Year!

Hello and welcome to 2022. I'd love to share some updates on upcoming projects!

First off, thank you for the kind words about my score for The Real Charlie Chaplin. The documentary is now available on SHOWTIME (streaming and TV). The UK Theatrical Premiere is February 18th, 2022.

In other news, Ensemble Connect will premiere a new work for large chamber ensemble on May 2nd, 2022, in Carnegie Hall's Resnick Education Wing. Save the date!

In commission news, I'm excited to be finishing up a work for Vibraphone and String Quartet for The Vibraphone Project (Premiere TBD). And later this Spring I will be working on a project with Theo Bleckmann and the Mondrian Ensemble, with a premiere (fingers crossed, Covid) set for early June in Switzerland.

Thanks for tuning in,
Robert

 
Soul House featured in Boston Globe

Check out David Weininger’s high praise of Soul House!

Read the review here:

The local recordings that helped us through 2020

Pull Quote:

As the months dragged on and our state of isolation never truly lifted, the piece I came back to the most was Robert Honstein's “Soul House,” commissioned and recorded by Hub New Music (New Amsterdam). Honstein's piece is a portrait of the house in New Jersey where he grew up, sketched with deep beauty and just enough grit to make it seem honest. Most of us have spent this year confined to our homes, which has meant a particular, persistent kind of gloom — for me and, I suspect, many others. During those moments, “Soul House” was there to remind me that there can be magic even in an overfamiliar dwelling, if you make the effort to look for it. My year would have been a lot tougher without it.


 
reviewDavid Stevens