Robin Holcomb and Peggy Lee - Reno (2025)

Seattle singer/songwriter/pianist Robin Holcomb and Vancouver cellist Peggy Lee have performed as a duo for 20 years; Reno is their first recording.

Reno is the first recording of Seattle singer/songwriter/pianist Robin Holcomb's duo with Vancouver cellist Peggy Lee, which has been active for two decades. It features several of Robin's enigmatic songs but is mostly focused on fairly short instrumental pieces. The intimacy and improvisational creativity of their music-making is remarkable, as is the realism and beauty of the sound.

This music is hard to classify - it reaches far beyond jazz. The soundworld and poetic vision of Holcomb's songs is linked to American folk music going back centuries, which she probes and references to reflect on the turbulent realities of today. Her pianism, notable for its unique harmonic language, and Lee's texturally gorgeous cello playing, combine a rigorous, contemporary classical focus with the freedom and the extended techniques of avant-jazz. The result is a highly expressive kind of modern art music that invites the listener into the conversation. As Meredith Monk has said about Robin, "Her music goes to the heart, to the bone and touches the soul."

Holcomb and Lee both have previous releases on Songlines: Robin Holcomb & Wayne Horvitz, Solos (2004); Robin Holcomb and Talking Pictures with Wayne Horvitz, The Point of It All (2010); Peggy Lee, Echo Painting (2018); The Peggy Lee Band, A Giving Way (2023); Waxwing, A Bowl of Sixty Taxidermists (2015); Waxwing, Flicker Down (2021).

Robin Holcomb piano & voice
Peggy Lee cello