The Story

Pianist, author, and composer Robin Meloy Goldsby performs live in a variety of settings. She serves as a cultural ambassador for European organizations dedicated to transatlantic relations and women’s rights. Robin has performed for His Majesty, King Charles, at Buckingham Palace, for former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and most recently for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to celebrate the installation of Chief Justice Debra Todd.

Goldsby has performed for numerous U.S. Consulates in Europe; for Amerika Haus, e.V. NRW; for Steinway in New York, Berlin, and Vienna; and for the Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas (FAWCO) in Marrakesh, Vilnius, Paris, Oslo, Stockholm, and Dublin. Goldsby’s one-woman performance includes stories from her books along with her solo piano compositions. 

After playing for fifteen years in many of New York City’s top hotels, Goldsby moved to Cologne, Germany. From 2001 to 2015, Robin played regularly at Schlosshotel Lerbach, a five-star castle hotel in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, where she was the Artistic Director for the “Concerts in the Castle” series. Currently Robin is the featured pianist at Excelsior Hotel Ernst in Cologne and maintains a summer artist residency at Brenners Park Hotel in Baden Baden. Robin is a Steinway Artist.

The Music:

“Powerful, emotional music . . .”  Matt Stuart, Time Magazine

With decades of experience in many of the world’s best piano rooms, Robin Meloy Goldsby has sculpted a place for herself as a master of gracefully played ambient music that elevates the elegance of any occasion. A popular streaming artist, Goldsby has logged over 200 million streams on the Pandora platform in the USA. 

Fans describe her melodies as peaceful, inspirational, and magical. 

In 1994, Goldsby released her recording debut of standards and popular classics, Somewhere In Time (Bass Lion Music). Goldsby’s arrangements, honed over the years during her tenure as a hotel pianist in New York are “the most beautiful and unique arrangements of these songs I’ve ever heard” according to producer/pianist Robin Spielberg. 

1994 was a transitional year for Robin’s family. Shortly after the release of Somewhere in Time, Goldsby moved to Cologne, Germany, with her husband, jazz bassist John Goldsby. Over the course of several years, Goldsby composed fifteen original compositions for solo piano. Twilight (Bass Lion Music) was recorded in Cologne, Germany at Topaz Studios. Twilight features songs inspired by Robin’s journey to Europe (“One Woman’s Journey”), the birth of her daughter (“The Light In Julia’s Eyes”), romance (“When Stars Dance”), and loneliness (“Miss You Most of All”). The three-movement piano suite, “Nantucket Solitude” is dedicated to the memory of Fred Rogers—a family friend and the employer of Robin’s father, Bob Rawsthorne, a musician who played drums and percussion on the Mister Rogers Neighborhood program for 35 years. 

Songs from the Castle (Bass Lion Music) A collection of eleven original compositions and several beautiful standards, Songs from the Castle mingles Robin’s graceful melodies with the artistic and relaxed arrangements that have become her trademark. The “castle” in the title is Schlosshotel Lerbach, where Goldsby performed for fourteen years between 2000-2014. Over a 120 million listeners have streamed Goldsby’s version of the “Pachelbel Canon in D.”

Waltz of the Asparagus People (Bass Lion Music) is Goldsby’s most popular release. Monica Kern of PianoWorld.com says: “Goldsby has a distinctive style and a delicacy of touch that nonetheless conveys a strong sense of melody.” The pieces on Waltz of the Asparagus People correspond with the stories in Goldsby’s book of the same title.

Magnolia celebrates the arrival of spring. With Goldsby’s relaxing, refreshing, and beautiful arrangements, Robin offers the listener forty-five graceful minutes of skillful solo piano. Full of optimism and gentle power, her original compositions echo the subtle change of seasons, while her interpretations of familiar melodies reflect the passing of time. Her music mirrors the happiness of springtime: new life, new love, and long afternoons in the park. Magnolia opens the door to the spring season at any time of year.

December ushers in the holiday season with Robin Meloy Goldsby’s signature solo piano style, featuring beautiful arrangements of traditional Christmas music, contemporary classics, and four of Robin’s compositions. Robin’s daughter, Julia Goldsby, debuts on the album as pianist and composer on the track “Close to Midnight.”

Home and Away launched on November 26th, 2017. Home and Away takes the listener on a tour of the places Goldsby has called home.  “I try to offer a little bit of quiet in a noisy world,” she says. “A little bit of home.” Beautifully recorded and mastered by Reinhard Kobialka of Topaz Audio Studios in Cologne on a 1967 Steinway B, Goldsby’s music speaks volumes without words. Goldsby’s premiere performance of Home and Away was for HRH, The Prince of Wales (now King Charles), at Buckingham Palace.

Piano del Sol (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) is a collection of EPs commissioned by Mediterana, one of Europe’s most celebrated wellness retreats. 

The Living Room Collection (Volumes 1, 2, 3) offers an elegant, quiet, and melodic  sound track to enhance life’s most meaningful moments. 

The Piano Room—launching in 2023—invites Goldsby’s audience into the musical sphere of European Grand Hotels, castles, and gardens. The collection includes three EPs: Familiar Places, Dearest Things, and Parting Glass.  

The Books:

“Goldsby has a wicked sense of humor and a keen eye for the absurd. This is bold, truthful, eye-opening memoir.” Publishers Weekly Starred review of Piano Girl.

Piano Girl: A Memoir (Backbeat Books), Goldsby’s first book, made its hardcover debut in spring, 2005. A giddy mixture of droll hilarity and pathos, Piano Girl delivers an entertaining and enlightening memoir of music and life as a cocktail pianist. The book provides a rare glimpse into the comedies, tragedies, and mundane miracles witnessed from the player’s side of the grand piano. Piano Girl received a prestigious “starred review” from Publishers Weekly and was honored as one of the picks of the summer by Book Sense, the leading organization representing independent bookstores in the United States. Goldsby’s many radio appearances include NPR’s All Things Considered, The Leonard Lopate Show in New York City, and several appearances on Marian McPartland’s NPR Piano Jazz. 

The Piano Girl journey continues with Waltz of the Asparagus People (Bass Lion Publishing). The book, a long-awaited sequel to Piano Girl follows American pianist Robin and her family to Europe, recounting their adventures and frustrations as they learn a new language, adapt to a new culture, and find new friends. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, and always insightful, Goldsby’s lyrical stories reveal the trials and triumphs of an expatriate musician’s life, as Goldsby connects her music to family, friends, and home, past and present. Walzer der Sparelmenschen (Bücken und Sulzer Verlag) offers Dagmar Breitenbach’s excellent German adaptation of Goldsby’s stories. 

Goldsby’s fiction debut, RHYTHM: A Novel (Bass Lion Publishing), traces a young musician’s artistic and emotional development over the course of fifteen years, as she builds her career and learns to cope with her mother’s death. With humor and passion, the heartwarming story reveals the tragic beauty of human resilience, the restorative power of love and laughter, and the way one girl’s music—steady, solid, and courageous—helps to mend her shattered heart.

Manhattan Road Trip, offers thirteen sparkling fictional stories that illuminate the not-so-public lives of musicians. Fragile, feisty, courageous, but sometimes just plain world-weary, Goldsby’s unbreakable protagonists push aside little injustices, dodge the slings and arrows of their tone-deaf neighbors, and keep playing the music they love.

Piano Girl Playbook: Notes on a Musical Life connects the humanity of Goldsby’s audiences—princes and paupers, dreamers and doers, moguls, mobsters, wanna-bes, and has-beens—with the quiet soundtrack of her peripatetic, melodic life. Goldsby’s autobiographical stories and essays deliver insights into the art and craft of piano playing, the merits of live music, and how the right song at the right moment can add color and depth to a drab, one-dimensional world. Music, it turns out, connects us in unpredictable ways. 

The Words:

“Goldsby quicksteps from bumptious to bawdy to trenchant with impeccable timing with her hilarious, truth-telling writing. Brava!” Betsy Burton, The King’s English

Robin maintains a popular blog that features monthly essays about her life as a musician, parent, wife, and observer of things bizarre and wonderful. 

Goldsby writes lyrics for other composers and performers. She has worked with European singer/guitarist Peter Fessler (Blue Summer, Landscape Tapestry, and Fly! ) in addition to penning lyrics for Jessica Gall (Little Big Soul, Riviera, Picture Perfect), Brazilian jazz star Joyce Moreno, German R&B sensation Jeff Cascaro (Soul of a Singer, Mother-Brother, The Other Man, Love and Blues in the City), Italian R&B singer Mario Biondi, Dutch singer and Edison award-winner Fay Claassen, and Till Broenner, who produced and co-wrote (with Robin) the Curtis Stigers song, “Christmas is Never” for The Christmas Album and “Her Smile” (The Good Life). Till’s recent album On Vacation includes two lyrics penned by Robin (“On Vacation,” “Lemonade”) Goldsby’s collaboration with Joyce Moreno—Slow Music—earned a Latin-Grammy nomination for Best Brazilian Album.