Early Life and Education
Daughter of David V. and Naomi Robison, an actor. David Robison was a musicologist who later became a playwright and a film and television writer. Her paternal grandmother was a piano teacher, her maternal uncle the playwright Jerome Lawrence, and there were other musicians and dancers in the family. David studied in Vienna, and upon his return joined the faculty of Fisk University. There the family met the singer Paul Robeson, who became Paula’s godfather. The entire family was immersed in the arts, leftward-leaning political beliefs, and the beginnings of the civil rights movement.
They moved to Hollywood, where Naomi continued her acting career and David took up screenwriting. Paula’s sister Deborah and brother Joshua were born there. The family remained in Southern California. Paula learned to play the flute in the orchestra of North Hollywood Junior High School, continuing her studies with Arthur Hoberman. She studied piano with her grandmother. At the age of ten she first met Leon Kirchner, with whom she enjoyed many collaborations as an adult. She made the decision to become a musician when she was twelve.
During the McCarthy era the Robisons were charged and questioned by a committee in a televised hearing. With both parents on the Hollywood blacklist and out of work, the family was suddenly without financial resources and was compelled to move to New York State to live with her grandmother on her farm. After about five years, David Robison was able to start writing again under a pen name and found success in television, writing for Lassie, Bewitched, and The Andy Griffith Show. When the blacklist came to an end, he resumed writing under his own name again. His play, Promenade, All, with a star cast which included Hume Cronyn, Eli Wallach and Ann Jackson, played on Broadway in 1972. His daughter’s love of theater has never left her over the years.
Paula Robison attended the University of Southern California for two years, studying flute with Roger Stevens, Principal Flutist of the LA Philharmonic, theater with Jeff Corey, and dance with Bella Lewitzky.
She eventually played for Julius Baker, which led to an audition for the Juilliard School. She was admitted and graduated with a BS in 1963. In 1961 she also began to study during the summers with Marcel Moyse (making her the direct musical descendant of Paul Taffanel), and this brought her into the circle of the Marlboro Music School. Her studies with Moyse continued until 1968, but her presence at Marlboro continued long after.
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