Born in Savannah, Georgia in 1954, Robin Holcomb grew up in and around the South Bay – in Santa Cruz, Salinas, San Jose, and Bonny Doon. She began playing the piano at the age of 6 and studied classically throughout her teens. At age 17 she moved to North Carolina where she sharecropped tobacco for two years and wrote many of the poems that were the foundation of her earliest songs. Returning to Santa Cruz in 1974, she studied music and writing at Cabrillo College and UCSC. Holcomb’s primary focus was ethnomusicology, Sundanese Gamelan music and, at the piano, improvisation. In 1977 she moved with her partner, composer Wayne Horvitz, to New York City. During this time, she worked with a wide variety of musicians including drummer Denis Charles (Cecil Taylor), Alva Rogers, Jearlyn Steele Arto Lindsay, Syd Straw, Marty Ehrlich, John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Lee Renaldo, and Butch Morris…