Chinese Legend

(Udaya Ravichandrika, Bilaskhani Todi and Gunkali)

Chinese Legend originated with the main repeated melodic figure that came to me while driving home over Coldwater Canyon after midnight following an informal and moving sitar performance by Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy at his home. Out of curiosity, I searched for a raga that contained the same swaras or tones of my newfound melody, discovering Udaya Ravichandrika, a South Indian raga. There is some controversy over whether to use a natural or flat seventh. I decided to use both. The main melodic voice here is a sitar, the instrument of Ravi Shankar.

During the fall of 1997, Martin Perlich, the distinguished KUSC Los Angeles radio host, played Chinese Legend inbetween music by Mozart and C.P.E. Bach, describing my music as “highly recommended for people interested in living composers.”

From Hills of Snow was inspired by a recording of raga Bilaskhani Todi by sitarist Rais Khan and Sultan Khan, the sarangi artist. Bilas Khan composed this elegiac raga in the sixteenth century for the funeral of his father, Tansen, one of the greatest figures in the history of Hindustani music. Tansen had disapproved of his son's marriage, and they had not spoken for years. Upon completion of its first performance, this profoundly moving raga miraculously caused Tansen's arm to move with a gesture of forgiveness. I have chosen a piano timbre with an Indian tuning for this composition.
Porcelain Nights was a great pleasure and challenge for me. It is based on raga Gunkali, an inspirational early morning raga that was sung by Bade Ghulam Ali Khan on one of the first Indian classical music recordings I ever heard. It remains a favorite to this day. The zither timbre employed here is a tribute to santoor artist Shivkumar Sharma. After completing the work, I was fortunate to come across his own version of Gunkali, and I subsequently decided to replace my original tanpura pattern with the one he uses to "create the atmosphere" of Gunkali.

All three of these compositions were written in 1997.

- Michael Robinson, January 1999, Los Angeles

© 1999 Michael Robinson

There is without doubt method to the barely restrained madness that frequently surfaces in the music of Michael Robinson, a Beverly Hills resident who recently had his music improvised by none other than Ray Manzarek at LA's Jazz Bakery.

At times the music drifts along with a minimum of fuss only to be plucked from the tranquil stream bed and twisted in front of your ears into something very different. From out of nowhere a resounding tabla and accompanying Indian percussion will leap from the undergrowth and embellish the increasingly erratic piano lines that only seconds earlier were wandering aimlessly.

There are also extremely interesting divisions between the hand played parts and the obviously heavily sequenced ones, usually without any indication that one has taken over from the other. Either the lead parts are recorded very very slowly and quantized or Michael is leaving sections for the cut and paste.

Who knows? The main thing is that his music is a definite grower. I've listened to the whole album several times at different times of the day and found myself increasingly drawn to the random creativity that creates spaces that are quite unique to this composer.In closing the presentation of the CD's we received for our listening pleasure were packaged quite delightfully with covers comprising of single sheets of Japanese hand silk screened rice paper and a direct to disk recording autographed by Michael himself.Before I even placed it on the platter I just knew I'd love it.Rating - 921,233 (out of a possible 1,000,000)

- electronicmusic.com