Robbie Lee

Robbie Lee operates from New York as a composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser, releasing material both under his own name and through the Creature Automatic project. His output spans rock & roll, experimental music, classical traditions both ancient and contemporary, plus folk forms old and new. A wide-ranging instrumentalist, he favors pre-modern Western tools that he places in unexpected settings, among them Baroque and medieval flute, crumhorn, Renaissance clarinet, portative organ, and bass recorders. The guiding principle behind his work is the insertion of archaic timbres and sonorities into thoroughly contemporary frameworks. Although his own-name discography is anchored by the 2006 album Sleep Memory—a set of songs scored for vocals, guitar, piano, bass, winds, and drums—and Dust Clouds May Exist under the Creature Automatic moniker, he is chiefly sought after as a session musician and stage collaborator whose credits encompass Neil Michael Hagerty, Josef Van Wissem, Cass McCombs, Mary Halvorson, Baby Dee, and numerous others. He also belongs to a recording and improvising trio featuring German flutist Norbert Rodenkirchen of Sequentia and bassist James Ilgenfritz, and he co-operates the Tele-Graph Harp label with Che Chen.

Raised in a Massachusetts household just beyond Boston where traditional jazz filled the air, Lee gravitated toward the saxophone at age eight. Douglas Yates instructed him, instilling improvisation through immersion in Sun Ra’s catalog; Lee’s sophomore recital consisted entirely of Ra material. He developed his abilities in a “horizontal” setting that encompassed reed and wind instruments of many kinds. At fifteen, exposure to a Yusuf Lateef shehnai recording prompted him to acquire and master the instrument himself, while he simultaneously pursued early-music instruments and attended local early-music performances. Only in college did he encounter pop music; after graduation he relocated to New York and joined rock ensembles, among them Howling Hex, already displaying the stylistic approach that would become his signature, even as he remained deeply engaged with Brooklyn’s avant-garde improvisation community and continued composing his own material.

From 2004 through 2010 he self-released a succession of CDs—Dog Run, New Music for Renaissance Winds (2008), Creatures Alone (2008), Three Constellations (2008), Ricardo Sun (2009), and The Evening Star and The Morning Star (2010)—initially circulated among friends and at live shows, which in turn generated additional session opportunities. His first appearance alongside Dax Riggs came in 2007 on We Sing of Only Blood or Love; he later co-produced and contributed keyboards to Say Goodnight to the World. In 2008 he supplied Renaissance clarinet, bass clarinet, and saxophone to Baby Dee’s Safe Inside the Day and issued Begin and Continue with Chen. Further joint projects followed, including the 2011 Howling Hex album for XI and additional work with Hagerty on the Victory Chimp audiobook. Lee’s technical expertise proved valuable on Heresy of the Free Spirit: A Prayer for Light (2011) by Van Wissem and Jim Jarmusch, where he performed on portative organ, low recorders, electric guitar, and bells; he also engineered, mixed, and mastered the duo’s 2012 EPs Concerning the Entrance Into Eternity and The Mystery of Heaven, and handled recording and engineering for Van Wissem’s score to Jarmusch’s 2013 film Only Lovers Left Alive. That same year he debuted on a Cass McCombs release, playing seven distinct instruments across Big Wheel and Others. Subsequent years found him immersed in improvisational ensembles while still issuing Creature Automatic’s debut Dust Clouds May Exist in 2015 and contributing to Psalm Zero’s Stranger to Violence the next year. In 2017 he and Chen released The Spectrum Does, Cassandra Jenkins issued Play til You Win, and !!! released Shake the Shudder.

As an improviser, 2018 proved especially fruitful: the trio with Rodenkirchen and Ilgenfritz delivered the widely praised Opalescence, and Halvorson, a longtime associate, joined him for a series of improvisations issued by New Amsterdam as Seed Triangular. On that album Halvorson employed an 18-string harp guitar among other instruments, while Lee performed on Baroque flutes, chalumeau, Renaissance clarinet, and the soprillo saxophone, the piccolo-sized and smallest member of the saxophone family.