A self-taught pianist and composer, Reginald began his professional career in 1992, collaborating with pianist Jon Weber, producing Reginald’s first recording, The Strongman. Since then, Reginald has recorded and produced five albums displaying his virtuosity as a performer, composer, and arranger.

Marian McPartland, a huge supporter of Reginald, featured him on her “Piano Jazz” show in December 1993. Reginald was also her inaugural guest for the McPartland/Eastman Jazz Series at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York in May 1999. While at the Eastman School of Music, McPartland pre-arranged studio recording time for Reginald, and suggested that he name his project Man Out of Time, after one of the tunes he had recorded there. From motion picture to stage, Reginald was a contributing composer for the 2003 stage play, Intimate Apparel. Already a seasoned veteran, his first experience with stage plays occurred in 1995, as a performer/composer for Each One as She May (dir. Frank Galati), when his music was nominated for Best Original Music at the 1995 Joseph Jefferson Awards. In 2004 he made a special guest appearance in Tan Manhattan, a reconstruction of the 1941 Eubie Blake and Andy Razaf musical revue.

His experience as a composer for theatrical works proved a perfect prerequisite for composing original music for motion pictures. Reginald’s debut as a film composer commenced with Compensation (2000), followed by Morning Due (2008). Robinson composed an original piano score for a 2003 live screening of Oscar Micheaux’s 1920 silent film, Within Our Gates. Film scoring assignments were juxtaposed with the world of television in 2005 when Reginald’s original compositions provided the underscore to the PBS documentary, Paper Trail.

In 2004, Reginald was awarded the rare and distinguished John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship grant for his innovation in ragtime. Since becoming a MacArthur Fellow, Reginald has furthered his efforts as a music historian, lecturing at colleges across the United States, and collecting/preserving historical data related to ragtime and Black Classical Music. He served as a contributing historian to the 2010 PBS documentary, Chicago’s Black Metropolis.

In the Spring of 2015, Reginald premiered new piano vignettes inspired by Sandra Cisneros’ book, The House on Mango Street. The premiere featured Cisneros and Robinson interacting before a live concert audience at the National Museum of Mexican Arts in Chicago, Illinois.

This year, Reginald was a guest performer at Lapham’s Quarterly Decades Ball The 1900s and National Public Housing Museum’s On The Lawn Concert at Millennium Park.

In addition to concertizing, Reginald is internationally known for his lectures at colleges and universities, which have aided in preserving the legacy of African American history.