"...Bernstein looks mannered, overemotional, performatively in search of transcendence. (NY Times)

I couldn't disagree more. Bernstein's physical gestures and expressions were spontaneously born ENTIRELY from a profound understanding of the score as witness the actual MUSICAL results.

Leonard Bernstein's profound intellectual and expressive understanding of music is PRECISELY what allowed him to make spontaneous use of his body and emotions to convey the essence of a composer's work, not to mention how he helped bring Mahler to the fore.

The music department of the New York Times has no idea what music is then and now Harold C. Schoenberg, Zachary Wolfe, Jon Parales and Giovanni Russenello you all need to retire together with Tim Page of USC and Alex Ross of the New Yorker and Allan Zozinn of the WSJ. Please notice how none of them are women.

That would be a happy day for everyone including myself.

One thing you guys not dolls have in common with Alex Ross and Tim Page and Allan Zozinn and Kyle Gann and Leon Botstein is how much you love Richard Wagner who went in search of Indian ragas but never found them unlike myself.

And Adolf Hitler went in search of the American West like Vladimir Putin but like Billie Eilish he did not name his one man opera the Holocaust she is way above his pay grade like myself artistically.

And Vladimir Putin should retire, too. He's no Vladimir Horowitz in music or warfare unlike General Georgy Zhuhov or Prime Minister Winston Churchill to name a few.

- Michael Eric Robinson Longhi, November 2024, Los Angeles

 

© 2024 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

 

Michael Eric Robinson Longhi is a Los Angeles and Hawaii-based composer, programmer, pianist and musicologist. His 200 albums include 153 albums for meruvina featured on National Public Rado, Pacifica Radio and University, College and Public radio stations across America in addition to the rest of the world. There are also currently 47 albums of piano improvisations both solo and duet with Guruji Anindo Chatterjee of India and Eliot Zigmund of the Bill Evans Trio both among the greatest percussionists in recorded history.

Michael's primary jazz teacher was alto saxophonist Lee Konitz of the Lennie Tristano Quartet who would fill in for Charlie Parker when he was indisposed joined by Bud Powell, Charlie Mingus and Max Roach, lead soloist with the Stan Kenton Orchestra that included Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Levey and Bird, led a quartet featuring Billy Bauer, Don Bagley, Arnold Fishkin, Miles Davis and Roach, performed at the first Newport Jazz Festival with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Dave Brubeck with Paul Desmond and Joe Morello before becoming strictly a solo artist with various accompanying musicians like Hal Galper, Chick Corea, Red Mitchell, Joe Henderson, Elvin Jones, Jack DeJohnette, Peggy Stern, Blue Mitchell, Bill Evan, Alan Dawson, Phil Woods, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, also Hank Freeman of the original Artie Shaw Orchestra who recorded Begin the Beguine and Dinah Washington would later never record without him playing lead alto, Charlie Colin, Rollan Masciarelli from Columbia University in NYC, Ray Shiner of the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra who earlier did the arrangements for Benny Goodman (he being Lee and Bird's primary jazz Guru together with Lester Young, Lennie, Artie and Louis Armstrong) and New York Philharmonic, Reggie Johnson featured on Archie Shep's greatest album, Makambo Ken McIntyre who founded the first jazz program in the USA and Paul Jeffrey of the Thelonious Monk Quartet.

His primary Western Classical Music composition teachers were Adele Berk, Don Funes, John Cage and Steve Reich, also Morton Feldman, Leonard Bernstein, Gunther Schuller, John Chowning, La Monte Young, Robert Washburn, Eliot Del Borgo, James Ball, Arthur Frackenpohl and Perry Yaw.

Longhi's primary North Indian Classical Music teachers were Harihar Rao of UCLA, the senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar who invited Michael to study with him too; Pandit Shivkumar Sharma who reinvented the ancient folk music instrument Voice of A Hundred Colours the Indian santoor which is a powerfully influential precursor of our Western keyboard instruments including the piano anticipating Robinson's Meruvina compositions and realizations; Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy of the Oriental Music School in London, England who was born in a Palace on the Indian Ocean in Bombay a Hindu family that converted to Islam working in forest trees, Pandit Jasraj The Sun of Music in India, Popat Savla, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Pandit Ram Narayan and N. Rajam from recordings, Kala Ramnath, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri and his current Guruji is Pandit Anindo Chatterjee.

His over 400 essays mostly about music have been used by myriad institutions including Carnegie Hall, New York University, the University of California at Berkeley, UCLA and CalArts.

Michael has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College and California State University Long Beach and Dominguez Hills, the Pasadena California Libraries and Wantagh High School in Nassau County on the South Shore of Long Island in the State of New York.

Robinson has performed in the New York City Libraries, the Beverly Hills California Library, La Mama La Galleria and the Knitting Factory in Manhattan, Hunter College of New York City University and myriad churches in Manhattan New York City, Los Angeles County including the first Film Festival of India and Maui Hawaii to name a few.

Michael was born in French Hospital in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan later named Chelsea where The Godfather was later filmed and has lived in Borough Park Brooklyn, North Merrick in Nassau County Long Island, Wantagh named for a Chief of the Montauk Native Americans, the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Beverly Hills and Los Angeles California and Kapalua and Kula Maui Hawaii the Aloha State.

The above bio is a brief ongoing summation due to limitations of time and akasha (space) and have everything to do with Johnny Winter an albino from Texas being the greatest rock guitarist in recorded history the electric guitar being the essence of rock, the piano the essence of past Western classical music, the saxophone being the essence of jazz and the Meruvina being the essence of computer music the current chief manisfestaion of Western Classical Music.

Michael will soon be adding alto and tenor saxophone recordings to his oeuvre together with the gatra vina.