Not to be confused with the contemporary classical composer of the same name, Robert Martin is a cellist whose affiliations have included the Bard Festival String Quartet and the Sequoia String Quartet. Although Martin has shown up on a few recording dates of pop and vocal music, his main interest is the classical repertoire; one of his obvious areas of expertise is the chamber music of Beethoven. Along with collaborator Robert Winter, the cellist edited the highly-praised The Beethoven Companion, published in paperback in 1996. The cellist has also taken part in recordings of compositions by Prokofiev and Ravel, to cite two highly contrasting modes of compositional expression. In 2000 Martin was featured on a recording of chamber music by Albert Roussel released on the Centaur label. His partners in the Bard College chamber group are violinists Laurie Smukler and Patricia Sunwoo, and violist Ira Weller. There are other people named Robert Martin on the classical scene including several string players and a recording engineer. ~ Eugene Chadbourne