McNeil Robinson II, an acclaimed organist, composer and teacher, died on May 9 in Manhattan. He was 72.
His death was confirmed by a friend, F. Anthony Thurman, who said Mr. Robinson had been in poor health for some time.
A gifted improviser, Mr. Robinson imparted that skill to many students in private lessons, as well as at the Mannes College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, where he was chairman of the organ department. He was the organist of the Park Avenue Synagogue from 1965 until 2012, and had also long been the organist and music director at the Park Avenue Christian Church. He left that church in 2008 because it was adopting a less traditional style of worship, and moved to the Holy Trinity Catholic Church on the Upper West Side, where he worked until last fall. Earlier in his career, he was at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Midtown.
His improvisational and compositional style was harmonically adventurous but still classical. In or out of church, his manner and his tongue could be anything but angelic.
“Neil smoked like a chimney, and could both charm people or offend them with equal ease,” James E. Thomashower, executive director of the American Guild of Organists, wrote in one of many tributes to Mr. Robinson on the group’s website. “He said and did outrageous things and got away with them because of his charismatic personality and the twinkle in his blue eyes.”
His improvisational and compositional style was harmonically adventurous but still classical.
Mr. Robinson’s survivors include his wife, Maria Cristina Robinson, and a brother, Robert Michael Robinson.
McNeil Robinson II was born in Birmingham, Ala., on March 16, 1943. As a teenager he studied piano at the conservatory there and performed as a soloist with the Birmingham Symphony, now the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. After attending Birmingham Southern College on a full scholarship, he moved to New York City in 1962 to study piano at Mannes with Leonard Shure.
He began organ studies at 23 at the Juilliard School, with Vernon de Tar and Anthony Newman. He also studied composition with Vincent Persichetti. After graduating in 1970, he studied in the United States and abroad with some of the most famous organists and composers of the day, including the French virtuoso Marcel Dupré, who praised Mr. Robinson’s recording of one of his pieces as “a magnificent performance of my work.”
Mr. Robinson’s own compositions for organ include the Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, first performed with the San Francisco Symphony in 1984, and the “Dismas Variations.” His works have been published by Theodore Presser, C. F. Peters and Oxford University Press, and in many hymnals. The Hymnal 1982 of the Episcopal Church has two, one a treatment of “While shepherds watched their flocks by night,” and the other of a plainsong melody.
Mr. Robinson played recitals in both hemispheres and conducted the premieres of many works by such 20th-century composers as Jacob Druckman and Jack Gottlieb. He also revived long-neglected works by Pergolesi, Scarlatti and Cavalli, as well as early pieces by Mozart and Méhul.
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