Standards are the ragas of jazz. Lying dormant, they may be awakened and brought to life by new interpretations joining the jazz era of their immaculate creation with the tenor of today. "New" denotes something other than emulating styles of the past either traditional or avant-garde, of course.

Standards encapsulate the potential feeling of jazz; the music and poetry of jazz suggested in composed melodies, harmonies and lyrics, poised to mix the expressive, spiritual and intellectual qualities of their birth milieu with the connective consciousness and rasas of unfolding moments in our time.

Lynn Bari introduced Serenade in Blue with Glenn Miller and his Band (1942)

Eighty years after the first appearance, Serenade in Blue, interpreted by Michael Robinson, is the third track on the Another World album (2022) following My Foolish Heart and I Get A Kick Out of You.

Oftentimes the original appearance of a song that became a standard did not actualize its true jazz potential, something frequently discovered and illuminated by singers and instrumentalists who intuited native to foreign improvisatory potentialities only after the initial virgin rendering.

- Michael Robinson, September 2022, Los Angeles

© 2022 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

Michael Robinson is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, jazz pianist and musicologist. His 183 albums include 151 albums for meruvina and 32 albums of piano improvisations. Robinson has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College and California State University Long Beach and Dominguez Hills.