2023 Projects

The UNM John Donald Robb Musical Trust is actively involved in supporting the community by providing underwriting to organizations, ad hoc projects, educational outreach, programming, concerts, and events. Below is a list of the Trust's recent endeavors.

Adobe Saxophone Quartet

Part of the Robb Trust's mission is to promote the compositions of John Donald Robb. To that end, the Trust commissioned the Adobe Saxophone Quartet to perform a new arrangement of Robb's String Quartet No. 2, created by the Trust's graduate assistant Chris Orphal. The arrangement received its world premiere in March 2023 at the Robb Concert, the headliner event of the annual John Donald Robb Composers' Symposium. The Adobe Quartet subsequently recorded the Robb String Quartet No. 2 arrangement in May of 2023.

The Trust underwrote the studio recording, which involved hiring an artistic director to oversee the recording session, a recording engineer, the musicians, and an audio/visual editor to mix and edit the audio and create an official music video.

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National Hispanic Cultural Center

The Robb Trust underwrites annual community programming produced by the National Hispanic Cultural Center. Most recently was Día de Familia y Comunidad: Fiesta de Barelas March 22, 2023. Visitors had a chance to make paper architecture, maracas, and weavings, and learn from Barelas community organizations. Vicente Griego and Chuy Martinez who presented sing-along performances featuring music from the John Donald Robb Archives at the UNM Center of Southwest Research and Special Collections.

The free community event was supported by Bank of Albuquerque and musical performances were sponsored by the Robb Trust.

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PBS Learning Project

Folk Music of New Mexico: The John Donald Robb Collection is an educational initiative produced by New Mexico PBS and the University of New Mexico John Donald Robb Musical Trust with support from the University of New Mexico Libraries' Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, The Mr. and Mrs. Sanford N. McDonnell Foundation, The Brabson Library and Educational Foundation, and Albuquerque Public Schools. The collection contains video, audio, Spanish transcriptions, English translations, and sheet music for the traditional songs. Support materials include lesson plans (coming soon), student handouts, and video descriptions of the song forms. Supplemental reading material and a documentary film by NM PBS, The Musical Adventures of John Donald Robb in New Mexico, are also available.

The Robb Trust provides underwriting and extensive, detailed content. Trust Board members Rosalia Pacheco and Nancy Harbert, and Honorary Board member Enrique Lamadrid, are working closely with NMPBS to bring this project to a completion.

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Universidad de Nuevo México Mariachi

The Trust pays salary and benefits for two adjunct faculty teaching with the UNM Mariachi Program. Currently, those faculty are Monica E. Trujillo and José Carrillo.

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UNM Music Department Audiotape Digitization Archival Project

Approximately 25 years ago the UNM Fine Arts Library discarded about 1,500 reel-to-reel audio tapes of events presented by the UNM Music Department. The library no longer had the technology to play these tapes. The tapes represent a historic treasure trove with  recordings of faculty, student, and guest performances dating from the 1950s – 1990s.

They were given to the Music Department which placed them in the basement of Hokona Hall where they sat deteriorating and unavailable for decades. In the summer of 2022, the tapes were “rescued” and subsequently cleaned, labeled, and catalogued. They now reside back in the Music Department. The next goal of the project is to get the tapes digitized so the recordings are once again playable on modern equipment.


The UNM Robb Trust and its Archives/Underwriting Committee initiated support for the process.

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