Big Noise is managing the career of Cecile Clement Grobe and representing Cecile's catalog of recordings and songs for placement and licensing in film, TV, and advertising. Music supervisors can contact Big Noise about Cecile's catalog at 401-274-4770 (USA) or by emailing [email protected].

Big Noise's Al Gomes, A. Michelle, and Cynthia Roberge produced Cecile's acclaimed CD, 'Christmasland.' Read the reviews below.

 Listen and Buy 'Christmasland' now at CD Baby

Listen and Buy 'Christmasland' now at iTunes

Produced by Cecile Clement Grobe, Al Gomes,
A. Michelle and Cynthia Roberge
Engineered by Christine Lilley
Art direction and design by A. Michelle,
Al Gomes and Cynthia Roberge
Photography by John Grobe, Al Gomes and Cynthia Roberge
All songs arranged and performed by Cecile Clement Grobe

Complete Discography:

Christmasland (2007) CD
Transformation (2005) CD
In This Moment (2004) CD
Rhapsody (2002) CD
Mirrors (1999) CD
Wildflowers (1997) cassette
Return To The Hearth (1996) cassette
First Night Providence (1995) CD
(featuring 'Trees')
Personal Nature (1994) cassette

Bio

Acclaimed classical pianist and composer Cecile Clement Grobe celebrates the release of her fifth CD, 'Christmasland.'

'Christmasland' (Big Noise) is Cecile's very first holiday recording. The CD is a beautifully constructed song cycle and holiday scrapbook that combines ten joyful seasonal classics with seven of Cecile's sparkling original compositions, evoking the great traditional heart-felt themes of families gathering together, and couples falling in love during the treasured holiday season.

Cecile received her formal training at the Juilliard School of Music, where she was a student of Carl Friedberg, who was the last surviving student of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

She went on to pursue her career as a classical pianist, which has included performing at Carnegie Recital Hall. She has been hailed by critics as a pianist of unerring sensitivity with disciplined romanticism, the keynote of her style.

Cecile tours extensively performing her original works.

More

In the early 1990's, life as a concert pianist performing other composers' works and as a teacher was good. And maybe it would have stayed that way if not for a twist of fate.

One of her students, Joyce Kilmartin, encouraged her to start sharing the original compositions she had started to write with others. With Joyce's support and marketing expertise, Cecile soon found herself on a new path.

She began composing feverishly, something she'd always enjoyed but had always thought of as a personal interest rather than a professional one. That was to change, however, as she began performing her new works live and meeting with the audiences' responses.

In her own words: "My work comes from my experiences and I always learn something about myself. But from the overwhelming response of audiences, I realize that this personal experience is not personal at all. It is part of all of us, not mine, but ours."

"When I used to perform Bach and people didn't like it, I'd say, 'Oh well, they don't like Bach.' But when I started performing my own music, it was different."

Suddenly, as she began to talk to her audiences about her own music, she was somehow different. The sparkle in her eyes. The intensity on her face. The hands waving in the air as she described what she heard. What she felt. "You just reach a place inside where you are doing what you need to."

The Providence Journal described that: "One of the things I like best about Cecile's performance is that not only does her music sound so wonderful, but she tells you how she came up with it, like how she went walking in the woods and came back feeling so good that she captured that feeling in her music."

She translates her thoughts, her feelings, into the crescendos and the diminuendos, the dissonance and the harmony of her music. The romantic style that Cecile trained in with Carl Friedberg, with its musical flourishes and lush melodic tapestry is perfect to carry the emotive power of her compositions.

Cecile's Career:

Concerts:
Carnegie Hall (NY)
Juilliard Recital Hall (NY)
Indiana University
University of Massachusetts
Belcourt Castle (Newport, RI)
Castleton State College
Writers' Club (Brown University)
First Night Newport 2003, 2004, and 2005 (Newport Art Museum)
Soloist with Northeast Orchestras
Fleet Bank (Providence, RI)
'Hear In RI' (outdoor performance)
First Night Providence '95 and '96
Bright Night Providence 2007
Bell Gallery - List Center, Brown University
Music at Redwood, Newport, RI
Big Noise Song Slam 1999, 2000, and 2001 showcases

Places Cecile Has Taught:
Carnegie School of Music (NJ)
University of Massachusetts
Juilliard School of Music (as assistant to Jane Carlson)

Awards:

The National Academy of
Recording Arts & Sciences
placed Cecile Clement Grobe on the
Official Ballot for the 2008 Grammy Awards:
Record Of the Year - 'Yule Fire'
Best Pop Instrumental Performance - 'Holiday Romance'
Best Instrumentalist Soloist Performance - 'Winter Interlude'
Best Classical Contemporary Composition - 'Yule Fire'
Best Classical Crossover Album - 'Christmasland'

The National Academy of
Recording Arts & Sciences
placed Cecile Clement Grobe on the
Official Ballot for the 2006 Grammy Awards:
Record Of the Year - 'Rhapsody'
Album of the Year - 'Transformation'
Best Classical Album - 'Transformation'
Best Instrumentalist Soloist Performance - 'Jeanine's Song'
Best Classical Contemporary Composition - 'Tears & Rain'

The National Academy of
Recording Arts & Sciences
placed Cecile Clement Grobe on the
Official Ballot for the 2005 Grammy Awards:
Song Of the Year - 'Trees'
Best Classical Album - 'In This Moment'
Best Instrumentalist Soloist Performance - 'Trees'
Best Classical Contemporary Composition - 'Trees'

Miscellaneous:

- Debuted her original compositions at
the University of Massachusetts
- Member of RISA
- 'Trees' chosen for First Night Providence 10th Anniversary CD
- All compositions recorded and produced at Normandy Sound
(Phil Greene and Robert Pemberton, engineers)
and at Celebration Sound (Christine Lilley, engineer)

Press

Rick Massimo, The Providence Journal:

Cecile Clement Grobe
Christmasland
(Big Noise)

The Massachusetts classical pianist has come out with a winning collection of Christmas favorites with a few similarly memorable originals, all done in a plain, straight solo setting.

'Joy to the World' is lush and wintry-bright; 'Angels We Have Heard On High,' is ornate, speedy and precise; 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,' is full of speedy flourishes, and the originals, especially 'Christmas Eve,' and 'Evergreen,' are right in the pocket, accessible without being predictable, with enough off-kilter harmonies not to have to hide behind the Christmas-music excuse.

A winner.

Jim Macnie, The Providence Phoenix:

A performing pianist who has internalized the classical canon and worked in such vaunted venues as Carnegie Recital Hall, Cecile Clement Grobe was fulfilling her dream of being a sublime interpreter until she began writing her own music 15 years ago.

With their breadth, grace, and lilt, the original pieces were received even more positively than the classical masterworks that were her stock in trade; subsequently audiences now applaud C.C. Grobe the composer.

She will play tunes that come off like jukebox fantasias and impressions of holiday songs from her new CD, 'Christmasland' tonight at 7 pm.

Make time for the joy of Christmas
by Rita Lussier
Providence Journal

I'm trying to find a place I haven't been to in a long while. That's why I've come here to the Warwick Public Library.

As it turns out, I'm not alone. In fact, all of the chairs set up in this function room are taken, so my late arrival finds me standing in the back by the refreshment table. Not a bad place to be.

I take a cookie and a seat on the floor where I have a bird's-eye view of the decorations on the table. Looking through the holly berries, I can see Santa. He's the engineer on a wooden train heading out over the white tablecloth. It says JOY on his train. I'm hoping for a ride.

When Cecile Clement Grobe invited me here for her Christmas concert, I did the usual thing I do when I just can't do anymore. No way, I thought. I would have to move everything around on my schedule. Who has time just to sit and listen to Christmas music?

WHO HAS TIME JUST TO SIT AND LISTEN TO CHRISTMAS MUSIC?

Can you believe it? That's what I asked myself. And that's how my schedule got shuffled along with my priorities and I made it here, albeit at the last minute. But here I am.

And there's Mrs. Grobe taking her seat at the piano in front of the room, ready to perform the selections from her new CD, 'Christmasland.'

I've had the pleasure of hearing this 2008 Grammy-recognized pianist and composer from Fall River perform before. What I especially enjoy, besides her music, is the disarming way she introduces each piece and shares insights of how her experiences were transposed onto the keyboard.

Somewhere in between her rhythmic rendition of 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town' and her romantic composition, 'Yule Fire,' a gear shifts in my brain and I find myself transported on a lovely ride from hectic Christmas Present to carefree Christmas Past.

From packing and mailing to peeking at presents. From cooking and baking to nibbling the head off a gingerbread boy. From wrapping and decorating to caroling by the tree. From shoveling and driving to snow glistening in the lane.

It's as if, right here sitting on the floor of the Warwick Public Library, I've finally remembered why we are doing all this in the first place.

'My work comes from my experiences and I always learn something about myself,' says Mrs. Grobe. 'But from the overwhelming response of audiences, I realize that this personal experience is not personal at all. It is part of all of us, not mine, but ours.'

What I learned about myself thanks to a ride through 'Christmasland' is this: When I feel pressured to trim the tree I tend to blind myself to all the things that I love about the season. In my effort to tackle an extra long list, I let slip away the very things that would actually put me in the spirit to do everything else.

Maybe it's caroling with a choir. Meeting a friend for lunch. Stopping for hot cocoa with the kids. Going for a ride to see the lights. Sipping eggnog by the fire. Or yes, just sitting and listening to Christmas music.

Who has time just to sit and listen to Christmas music?

You do. I do.

Take the time. Take the break. Take the joy.

We deserve it.

For the moment:
This musician writes music of her heart
by Rita Lussier
Providence Journal

I've never tried to write with music playing in the background. Some people do it all the time, I know. But for some reason, in order to tell you this particular story, I need to hear this. It's a piece called "Impasse."

It's by Cecile Clement Grobe of Fall River -- Mrs. Grobe, to me. It opens slowly at first, much like the story of how it all began for her. The piano lessons at age 8. The influence of her mother, a singer who performed in New York with Fred Allen. The years at the Juilliard School of Music studying with Carl Friedberg, the last surviving student of Johannes Brahms.

As the composition begins to build, layer added to layer, I think of the changes life had in store for Mrs. Grobe. The love. The marriage. The move to New Jersey. The daughter. And yet, what remained constant was her passion for the piano as she performed at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall and Juilliard's Recital Hall, earning critical acclaim for her "unerring sensitivity and romanticism" along the way.

Life as a concert pianist and a teacher was good. And maybe it would have stayed that way, she told me, if not for two things: "black ice and death."

About a decade ago, Mrs. Grobe slipped on a sheet of ice and shattered the bones in her arm -- and her ability to play for a while. At about the same time, three close relatives died. It was an emotional time with a huge outpouring of feelings. And without her usual way of expressing them on the keyboard, they had no place to go. But before long, they did.

Mrs. Grobe created "Pathos" out of her grief when her mother died. Out of her pain watching the the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, she wrote "Tears and Rain." Out of her despair at hearing news of war, she composed "A March For Peace."

One of her students -- my friend, Joyce Kilmartin, who first introduced me to Mrs. Grobe -- encouraged her to share what she had written with others. With Joyce's support and marketing expertise, Mrs. Grobe soon found herself on a new path.

By their very nature, however, new paths can be uneven. "When I used to perform Bach and people didn't like it, I'd say, 'Oh well, they don't like Bach.' But when I started performing my own music, it was different."

And suddenly, as she began to talk about her own music, she was somehow different. The sparkle in her eyes. The intensity on her face. The hands waving in the air as she described what she heard. What she felt. "You just reach a place inside where you are doing what you need to."

"When you get older, you look at things differently. You look at the world differently. You see that we are all the same but there's this wall built up in between us. 'Impasse' is about this wall. We need to tear it down."

How she translates these thoughts, these feelings, into the crescendos and the diminuendos, the dissonance and the harmony that I'm listening to is hard to describe.

Al Gomes, her manager from Big Noise, an A&R recording artist development company in Providence, submitted several of Mrs. Grobe's compositions to the Grammy Awards this year. According to Gomes, four of her pieces were on the list sent to members who make Grammy nominations.

So what I'm hearing is that a woman from Fall River followed her passion to Juilliard and on to Carnegie Hall and eventually back home, where she fell on ice and grieved for those she loved but then rose up and transformed what she was feeling into compositions that made it all the way onto the ballot of the 2005 Grammy Awards. Tearing down walls? I'd say so.

World-class pianist comes to Coventry:
Pianist and composer Cecile Clement Grobe will be back
by popular demand to perform
by Jessica Carr
Kent County Daily Times

"We welcomed Cecile in to Coventry last year and we are hoping more people will come this year and enjoy her wonderful performance," said Jane Schweinsburg, an employee at the Coventry Public Library that helps to organize the performances. "She is just a magnificent performer and I wouldn't be surprised if she got a Grammy for her work."

As a former student at the Julliard School of Music under the instruction of Lonny Epstein, a Mozart specialist, and Carl Friedberg, the last surviving student of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, Grobe was able to develop into a renowned musician. As a professional concert pianist, Grobe has performed at such prestigious recital halls as Carnegie and Julliard. She has been hailed by critics as a pianist of "unerring sensitivity" with "Disciplined romanticism," the key note of her style.

"Cecile puts together music of a classical new wave sound that feels almost like Brazilian jazz and it's all her own music, only her music," said Schweinsburg.

"One of the things I like best about her performance is that not only does her music sound so wonderful, but she tells you about how she came up with it like how she went walking in the woods and came back feeling so good so she captured that feeling in her music."

Grobe has been composing her own music since the early 1990s, but according to information provided from the library about her, it was something she did merely as a hobby rather than as a professional gesture. Once Grobe became aware of immensely positive response from her audiences at the end of each public appearance, she explained how "my work comes from my experiences and I always learn something about myself, but from the overwhelming response of audiences. I realize this personal experience is not personal at all, it is part of us all, not mine, but ours."

Fan Mail

Dear Cecile:

Once again, a triumph of musicality and soul! Recently, we discussed a memoir called 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' by Azar Nafisi at the Library. It is the story of a group of women struggling against repression in the Islamic regime in Iran, secretly meeting to discuss literature in the author's home. One of the characters in the memoir is a friend of Nafisi's she calls 'the magician.' He is her mentor and helps her keep her sanity in the midst of an impossible situation-but, since he is an artist and a philosopher, he is more than a 'mentor,' he is a lodestone, a guiding light, someone who is able to give her what she needs to grow as a human being, grow enough to transcend the situation on some higher level of soul-functioning.

That book got me to thinking about 'magicians' in my own life. Cecile, you are definitely a 'magician' in mine! Though we haven't spent much time together, you have a profound impact on my thinking, and my sense of what is possible and impossible to achieve as a human being. I loved hearing your gorgeous music, it opened up spatial landscapes in my mind that really felt three-dimensional, and seemed to pry some hidden doors open in my innermost being as well. Giving rustily at first, then swinging freely on their hinges by song's end! And I drank in your words just as thirstily - so honest, generative, wise and transcendently loving. Thank you so, so much for your generous gift to the Library, Cecile! And here is to the 'magician' you so triumphantly are! Let's keep in touch.

Love, Lauri B.

Dear Cecile,

During your concert in Coventry, I realized that it had been too long since I had enjoyed live music by a performer with such concentrated talent.

For me, your gifts combine the best of 19th, 20th and 21st century music and made it all your own. I have a theory that the experience of sound is related to the experience of touch - that the sound waves can caress our minds and heal us in much the same ways a healing touch does.

Thank you for translating so much of what you feel on behalf of us all into a medium that touches us all.

Bravo, bravo!

Jane Schweinsburg
Coventry Public Library

Dear Cecile,

As I said to you on the day of your concert - that was the best artistic and spiritual experience I've had in a long, long time. You are a wonderful person, whose beauty shines out to a high luster with the added power of your training and technique.

I was in awe of what you can say with a keyboard - and with your voice and manner in your commentary as well. BRAVO!!!

Love,
Lauri B.

Dear Cecile,

It was an unexpected pleasure to happen upon your piano performance at Border's this afternoon. You play with energy and focus and your original compositions speak volumes about your spiritual generosity.

'Trees' is about a walk you had in the woods. That walk must have taken place in the autumn; you could almost hear leaves fall to the ground in a delicate, playful way from a strong and mighty tree.

A woman from the audience asked you to play 'Impasse' which you said is about breaking down the walls that separate us, one from the other. It begins with a constant and strong percussive repetition - chipping away, chipping away - but not nagging. Chipping away with lightness and even humor.

'Jeanine's Song,' written for your daughter, who you said always wants you to go further. 'It's a toughie,' you said. 'It was a tough one.' I think I saw (or heard) what you meant by it. It was a thicker stew, a thicker texture. Threads added later, perhaps gold threads, to add an unexpected sparkle to the weave. But when I say 'thicker,' I have to add that it never once got "heavy."

And 'Wildflowers' - about freedom - soared! Bravo! (Or Brava!)

Sincerely,
Barbara Waterston
Providence Magazine

Saudacoes, Cecile:

Your material arrived. I love it!

I'm still pre-producing the programs, and when I get more details I'll tell you. The station is called "Radio Cultura" and is located in Campinas (Sao Paulo state) and their waves reach 10 cities around.

And there is the posibility of your work being on the air at a radio station called "Eldorado," located in Sao Paulo. I give you more details as soon as I get them.

Much thanks for your help!"

- Luis Carlos Pavan

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