Michael Robinson

Jeweled Saddle

Cover art is printed British paper

 

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What a beautifully creative piece of music. (Kathryn)

 

1. Jeweled Saddle 50:17

fur grl, ac, tu, aw, dn2, rach-eli, thom-bee-free, benny g, wa, pp, gac, ez

meruvina: clarinet, drums and cymbals, electric piano

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Composed, Programmed, Mixed, Designed & Produced by Michael Erick Robinovitza Longhi

Recorded by Grayson Pollard

Mastered by Catharine Wood

SUPPORTED BY DUBLAB, NPR, PACIFICA, COLLEGE, COMMUNITY RADIO

On the road back, sunrise over Heng-t'ang,
The blossoming of the morning-star shines farewell on
the jeweled saddle.

- Li Shang-Yin (A.C. Graham)

I fell in love with this emphatic drum ostinato with a discreet sustained jazz chord combined with a melismatic clarinet moving freely over four octaves. It is a simple formula, one I didn't wish to tamper with too much, rather leaving it be to be.

During the time of composition I had rediscovered Benny Goodman, and I imagine some of his influence informs the piece, the way he mixes sustained tones and complex passages utilizing the full pitch range of the clarinet. While my clarinet goes lower into bass clarinet registers, Goodman often played notes higher than I used here.

Sometimes my clarinet sounds like a bird singing, something like a tabla player in terms of the rhythms articulated.

Jeweled Saddle is the fifth consecutive composition, following Gregorian Winter, Jetavana, Green Garnets and Jasmine Perfume, to eschew a through-composed percussion voice, relying only upon a through-composed melodic voice supported by chordal and drum ostinati, the difference being Jeweled Saddle uses a single sustained chord, the others using various chord progressions. 

I've been loving the aesthetic and challenge of this razor's edge extreme exposure contrasting pure melodic invention with its very opposite - an ostinato percussion voice. That, and how my meruvina enters here a realm of clarinet music beyond traditional performance capabilities; a musical fantasy outside of what has existed in the real world.

Jeweled Saddle is the most extreme of these five works given how there is only one sustained chord, really startling myself, double checking to verify if this is really what I want, but its definitely so because while the drum ostinato repeats throughout, together with the fully sustained chord, the overall music is constantly different in terms of relationships to the ever varying clarinet voice, the drums and chord calling us to perceive alive in the present, eschewing past and future, drawing special attention to the clarinet in their unwavering, selfless supportive play.

Now, after this fivefold album refreshing pause, perhaps I am ready to reenter the realm of through-composed percussion, no doubt.

There is something child-like, transcendental mystic and earthy all at once in my strong attraction to the single drum ostinato of Jeweled Saddle, watched carefully by the sustained, translucent electric piano jazz chord, all the while allowing the clarinet to roam unrestrained, the clarinet with cat associations established by Sergei Prokofiev in Peter and the Wolf, there being a number of adorable and mysterious cats in my life.

Jeweled Saddle began with a fascination for Raga Bageshri, retaining some characteristics of this glorious nighttime raga. The clarinet is tuned with Just Intonation, the purity of which conveys a soaring effect...

There is so much jazz in the clarinet play, the meruvina being my original vision of both Western classical music and jazz following directions suggested by the visionary John Coltrane and Rashied Ali Interstellar Space album.

- Michael Erick Robinovitza Longhi, July 2024, Los Angeles, California

 

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