Meet Michael Robinson

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michael Robinson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Michael with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
My work ethic comes from a passion for music, to create my own music recipes, the musical food I crave according to taste. My Guruji, tabla legend Anindo Chatterjee, told me music must be 24/7, a philosophy shared by the greatest jazz singer, Frank Sinatra. Anything less than total commitment is unworthy. Another teacher, Pandit Jasraj, the leading Hindustani music vocalist of our time, told me how God above all loves music, so create music to the best of your ability, and offer it to God. After yourself and God, others are welcome to listen, too. My father was fanatically disciplined and organized in his work, and the same for my mother, so these examples obviously had an effect as well.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
My four main musical activities, composing, programming, piano improvisation and musicology, are all characterized by embracing freedom to be myself. For composition, my perspective was how jazz superseded European classical as the true classical music of the Western world in the forties, followed by rock and pop beginning in the sixties. And when Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan brought Indian classical music here in the fifties, that form, too, became the true Western classical music even though the key practitioners were from India. Believing John Coltrane had brought jazz, and thus Western classical music, as far as it could go with human performance, I adopted a combination of software and hardware eventually named collectively the meruvina, finding pure computer-performed music to be of the zeitgeist as the saxophone was with jazz and the electric guitar with rock, utilizing the unique expressive and technical virtues of this new musical medium, preferring the simplicity and directness of one computer and one multi-timbral sound module. My fully notated scores are programmed to create live performances in real time without any overdubbing.

For piano improvisation, I began doing this most unexpectedly, beginning with a request from a friend’s mother in her nineties who asked me to play standards for her once a week. At one point, I began wondering how I might improvise on these songs in a meaningful way, not copying others as Bill Evans had advised.

Coincidentally fulfilling a prophecy made to me by Phil Schaap while a guest on his John Coltrane Birthday Broadcast on WKCR FM at Columbia University in Manhattan, who when asked what the future of jazz would be, said his best guess was it would involve building on innovations of Lennie Tristano, I intuitively began using my left hand like a walking bass inspired by Tristano’s example, accompanying the improvisations of my right hand, creating a form of two-part counterpoint. At the same time, I gradually realized how standards are the ragas of jazz, and began creating improvisations that may be described after the fact, because I simply play what I feel and hear, as polytonal, an innovation of Igor Stravinsky; polymodal, a term coined by Bela Bartok; and ragamala, meaning garland of ragas, expanded going beyond one tonal center. With my dual orientation of jazz and Indian classical music, I simply don’t differentiate between standards and ragas, they have unified synergistically in my musical being, including how I’ll play standards with raga-like lengths.

My writings about music, my musicology, is motivated by a passion for learning, this activity being an exploration of myriad musical subjects I’m glad to share with others, including a number of insights being made for the first time, fortunately highly regarded by master musicians in various genres.

For students, musicians, scholars and music lovers, my meruvina music, my piano improvisations, and writings about music, all offer unique musical worlds to experience and explore.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three most important areas of knowledge for myself have been music from Europe, America and India. From Europe there is the grand classical music tradition, and innovative forms of rock from England. From America we have jazz, rock, pop, and avant-garde, and from India we have their timeless classical music.

For those early in their musical journey, I would say pursue that which attracts you, what nurtures you, and what leads to developing your own unique voice wherever that may lead. Above all, don’t be dissuaded if what you do is unconventional or innovative, rather be encouraged by your individuality.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
I would say the chief challenge is not being deterred by less than unanimous interest and support for my music. Basically, I am a classical or art music artist, and such has always been primarily supported by patronage, as opposed to commercialism. I am very grateful for those who have shown interest in and support for my music, giving students, musicians, scholars, and music lovers information about something different from the norm.

The best I may do is release new meruvina and piano improvisation albums, making them available to those seeking new forms of music, the same applying to my writings about music. One of my compositional mentors, musicologist and arts administrator Leonard Altman, who asked Steve Reich to provide guidance early in my career, said my focus should always be on creating new music rather than being overly concerned about acceptance from others. This advice has been a guiding light, the concept of self-validation being something truly essential.

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Michael Robinson

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