Writings about Music

Shakti's Chanteuse: Joni Mitchell

Written in 2016

She’s part of all of us. She’s in our breath. I’ve heard she’s not well, and hope she gets well soon. For the music she’s given us, she deserves that so much. If we humans survive, eventually finding another planet to inhabit, I hope they take her music with them. Mine, too.

Her music is like golden honey. Where would we all be without her? Nowhere. It’s a foolish question though because her music is here and we are built by it.

 

 

 

Nearly twenty years ago, a UCLA department chair invited me to select one of my CDs for inclusion with cultural items carried by a satellite being sent into space for one hundred years. Here are the three compositions in sequence from the album I decided upon, Chinese Legend.

 

 

 

 

- Michael Robinson, August 2016, Los Angeles

 

© 2016 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

 

Postnote: Joni Mitchell made a rare public appearance in Los Angeles shortly after this writing was published, shown below.

Joni Mitchell, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock (2016)

 

Michael Robinson is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, jazz pianist and musicologist. His 198 albums include 151 albums for meruvina and 47 albums of piano improvisations. Robinson has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College and California State University Long Beach and Dominguez Hills.