These two contemporaneous music makers, Ravi Shankar and Dmitri Shostakovich, exemplified the uplifting richness of infinite rhythmic invention pouring multitudinous variants of phrase illuminated through brilliant instrumental colorings. Geographically and historically, the countries they were from, India and Russia, touch each other at key places in momentous ways.

Rajasthani Spring, composed in 2015 in Los Angeles, shows a love for musical color meshed with rhythms that attracted Michael Robinson to the music of Ravi Shankar and Dmitri Shostakovich among other pertinent qualities.

Myself, I recognized the nourishing invention of the Russian composer first, and later, the Indian sitarist.

- Michael Robinson, March 2018, Los Angeles

© 2018 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

Michael Robinson is a Los Angeles-based composer and writer (musicologist).