electronicmusic.com
Michael
Robinson: Chinese Legend
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)
-
Paul Clark
This feature has appeared in electronicmusic.com since 1997. In October 2006, we discovered that the web site is now a commercial site for some big-name companies. It appears that the site name may have been sold; that is a pretty major URL they have. In any event, best regards to the original editors of electronicmusic.com, and we are glad we saved what they wrote about Michael Robinson. The only other classical music composer we recall being featured at electronicmusic.com was Paul Lansky, who teaches composition and computer music at Princeton, and is Chair of the music department.