While reading Norman Lebrecht of the BBC online, I felt compelled to respond to one of his posts as follows below.

Lebrecht featured four of my essays online in 2020 pertaining to Patelson's, Lee Koniz and West Side Story, Charlie Parker and Ushering at Carnegie Hall together with my MARIA IMPROVISATION recording, but has never shown any interest in my Meruvina composed music, his tastes in that realm being most conservative and reactionary.

Here is what I originally wrote him with some crucial revisions:

Dear Norman: I'm not sure if some composers may be brave so much, but rather simply incapable of creating music 2 other than where natural instinct and circumstances lead.

Regarding your Arnold Schoenberg post today, “There are none so brave today, none so challenging to the complacent status quo.” 

I respectfully disagree, Norman, believing my fully notated compositions and performances for Meruvina are in complete opposite of the status quo, together with content and syntax imbued with and reflecting how American jazz, and British and American Rock and Pop, together with the classical music of India, superseded European classical music in the era I was born into.

Prior to myself, emerging like a beacon of light was the music of Steve Reich who heroically transitioned Western notated composition from serialism towards the modal and polyrhythmic music of India and other cultures.

Steve Reich specifically made this incredible musical journey inspired by the music of John Coltrane, American and British Rock and Pop, and the traditional classical musics of Africa and Indonesia.

Related to Arnold Schoenberg, I had a series of private composition lessons in Valencia, California in the California Institute of the Arts music studio of Leonard Stein, best known for being the music assistant and partner of Schoenberg, inbetween my leaving the California Institute of the Arts after Mel Powell and Mort Subotnick told me that Stein was not qualified to be a graduate school composition teacher.

After they refunded my full tuition costs (I had turned down a hurried offer for a full scholarship from Mel Powell previously not really understanding what he meant) upon expelling me for missing several concerts Mel Powell had not told me about during our private lessons, and Mort Subotnick told me how I lacked music imagination, creativity and technical ability, I moved back to Long Island, but then decided to study counterpoint with Leonard Stein privately, moving back to Valencia to do so, grateful for his kind offer.

However, at the end of our series of lessons, I was stunned when Leonard Stein told me I was not a gifted composer, contradicting Mel Powell who compared me to Wolfgang Amadus Mozart. It was if the whole thing was a set-up down with the full knowledge of Powell and Subotnick. Powell had almost fainted when he saw me walking in the main California Institute of the Arts building after expelling me with the full tuition refund, something I was told had never been done before.

In private, after Powell and Subotnick had expelled me, Nicholas England, the Dean of the Music Department who was clearly not in control, was very upset by how I was treated and tearfully - no exaggeration - urged me to transfer to the University of San Diego graduate composition program, but I had had enough of academic graduate school composition departments at that point. England, who specialized in the music of Africa, told me he had contacts there who would not have such hatred for me.

Perhaps I was also influenced by the hatred of a French-Slovenian composer who animalistically shoved me physically away from my friend Diamanda Galas and shut the door of her hotel room on me after grabbing her out of the room by the arm on a weekend morning surprising us when we were planning to go for brunch together being either a visiting composition professor or a faculty member at the music department at the University of San Diego where she was a graduate student or visiting artist.

More recently that same department also told me that my music had no artistic value not being a copycat like themselves and their leaders the racist AACM from Chicago who fortunately failed at expelling Jewish Americans from of the history of jazz largely by my writings and music, too, as in the central matter of Louis Karnofsky Armstrong my choice for the second greatest jazz trumpeter and singer of all time, after Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Sinatra, and Benny Goodman, easily the greatest jazz clarinetist of all time, and one of the few principals who actually created American jazz while seeding Modern jazz with Early or Dixieland jazz being more of an infant musical form not yet coming of age, something my friend and music teacher Gunther Schuller spent much time on in a book instead of facing his own time, writing about jazz from the late forties up until his passing in 2015. He was a very nice man as was his colleague there Leonard Bernstein even if he never danced disco with me like Lenny did after Tanglewood concerts.

I only wish they had played more Donna Summer and less edgy disco so that Bernstein and I could have spent more time with each other one cool summer night in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts because he was just as erudite and inspiring privately as he was leading conducting classes and major orchestras with zero hostility towards unusual people with new ideas and different personalities, quite the contrary - Leonard Bernstein was always seeking to learn and grow from others who were different from himself and did not view age as a barrier, plus not a hint of unwanted sexual attention as soon as he realized I was heterosexual.

Before being expelled, Mel Powell had become visibly furious - his face and entire body - upon finding me outside an African dance class wearing only gym shorts in the hallway with a number of women also in the class, while Subotnick was enraged upon learning of my previous friendship with his wife Joan LaBarbara before they were married. During the one private lesson we had his body and face were clenched with badly concealed hatred - it was astonishing. He had already decided that I was going to be expelled from the California Institute of the Arts graduate composition program before our lesson began and was only going through with a formality so he could insult and discourage me from continue being a composer while looking like a small scheming creature out of a Wagnerian hate opera.

Over ten years later after resettling in Beverly Hills, California, I was conversing with a former NY Times music writer and Harvard graduate whom my composition mentor Leonard Altman put me in touch with after a concert in Santa Monica also attended by Leonard Stein who I had not noticed there until he left the performance space where a concert had taken place.

As Leonard Stein was leaving towards the front door he turned and yelled out from some distance to this writer he obviously knew well in a flattering manner towards me I also found puzzling and alarming, "Be careful, he's a composer!"

Evidently Stein did not know that this individual already knew I was a composer, and perhaps Stein was alerting Alan Rich that I was a serious or even formidable composer as opposed to something else he was concerned Rich might mistake me for I suppose, perhaps a young man Rich wished to have an affair with? Who knows.

Ironically, I was the one who needed to be careful because Alan Rich turned out to be a menacing male sexual predator who wished to trade a good article or review for a sexual friendship, something I thought only happened in the movies but was so horrifying to me I never spoke to him again even when he made repeated attempts to do so including showing up at one of my concerts and then making a point of storming out during a soaring Adagio after staying less than fifteen minutes essentially missing the entire performance.

Altman, who was not in good health, obviously did not know this side of Rich who was even uglier than photos of Harvey Weinstein in terms of just physical appearance.

Unbelievably, Leonard phoned me a few days late to tell me how Alan Rich would only write a comedic article about my music because he found it not worthy of being taken seriously and would I like him to do so! Of course, I said no, and given Leonard's health did not go into any detail about Alan Rich's behavior.

This predator Alan Rich whom Mel Powell and Mort Subotnick selected to be their salaried professor of music writing at the California Institute of the Arts, droned on about how Subotnick and one of his pathetically mediocre students, Carl Stone, were "the future of music" when we met, telling me how I needed to change my approach to computer music, really like that was part of his job description, attempting to indoctrinate me into the party line and becoming visibly angry when I disagreed.

Joel Chadabe has also encouraged me to use the computer music software everyone else was required to use in academia, including himself, but was fine when I explained why it wasn't for me and continued championing my Meruvina music.

I am also certain Joel would have loved my jazz piano improvisations but he passed away before these were available.

All in all (there is more to say the least), my sense is that the California Institute of the Arts music department is a forever damned place of hate and ignorance despite what may have been the original good intentions of Robindro Ravi Shankar who set up teaching the classical music of India there with his disciple Amiya Dasgupta (1923-1994) who I have fond memories of.

Even though we only spoke to other briefly a few times, Amiya Dasgupta seemed to correctly sensed my keen interest in the classical music of India, something George Harrison of the Beatles fortuitously presaged and energized ten years later including singing Charukeshi, his favorite raga for me in Lahaina, Maui.

Shankar was regretfully also known (and I wish I had never heard about it) for fueling petty disputes as he did with Pandit Jasraj, The Sun of Music, as confided to me by Ravi's senior disciple and my principle Indian classical music teacher, Harihar Rao, who was always very nervous what would happen to the Music Circle and the Music Circle Recordings Archive after Raviji passed away, including how I was not allowed to listen to any of it even in the context of writing articles in the very room where the Music Archive recordings were stored while listening to them, not allowed to make a copy for myself.

Harihar Rao told me very angrily who he was planning to somehow take the Music Archive of The Music Circle away from the Robindro Ravi Shankar family after Shankar passed away but he himself passed away just months later.

Harihar did arrange my first interview with Shivkumar Sharma which was fortunate and this was followed by a second fortuitous interview arranged by the wonderful Mr. Milind Joshi who also took superb photographs of us together, he being among the most cultured and encouraging persons I have ever met.

Later on, I learned The Music Circle were using unpaid high school students who had no previous experience with Indian classical music to listen to the recordings for cataloging purposes, something I had offered to do for free to no avail.

The directors of The Music Circle headquarted in South Pasadena, California or Encinitas, California where George Harrison purchased a stately home on the ocean for Ravi Shankar, perhaps he also purchased the home in South Pasadena, obviously do not wish for musically gifted Americans to listen to these recorded concerts of priceless musical treasure as also proven by the way they sank The Music Circle concerts into the sewer after Harihar Rao passed away, another sad story to depressing to get into here.

Related to all this, some British music writer actually published a book about Robindro Ravi Shankar attempting to steal India's official name for Pandit Jasraj, The Sun of Music, something very sad, pathetic, ignorant beyond belief that author and their publishing company, but the actua music of Ravi Shankar will overcome that fiasco.

Robindro Ravi Shankar, who offered to give me private lessons, also had an American friend or employee music writer in a mediocre rock cover band famous for hard core drugs, is a proud hater of anything new in terms of the classical music of India.

This unfortunate individual who sounded permanately hopelessly drugged or like a Fairy character from a Disney cartoon, whose name I have thankfully forgotten, took pleasure in taunting me for being original and not a copycat like himself.

Echoing Alan Rich, he said I was using a new musical instrument, the Meruvina, illegally (!), he being an especially passionate hater of music technology used in new ways who delights at poking fun at music innovation he lacks the intellectual, spiritual, emotional and technical aptitude to comprehend.

I do my best to avoid the jealous haters who infect Our Sacred World Classical Music.

And beginning with my first album, TREMBLING FLOWERS, I have subsequently proved including all subsequent albums how all of the moronic haters mentioned above are complete jealous losers in terms of how they regard both World Classical Music composers and Jazz artists who actually evolve music rather than copy.

Part of my music life inside the classical music of India forms this link.

That is where Pandit Jasraj implored me to dwell, his spirit always with me if I stop to feel him, such a humble and great human being in addition to his unmatched artistry.

When you know someone like that personally it has special resonance.

- Michael Robinson Longhi, August 2021-February 2026, Los Angeles

© 2021-2026 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

Michael Robinson Longhi is a Los Angeles-based composer, pianist, and musicologist. His over 200 albums include over 150 albums for meruvina and over 50 albums of piano improvisations. He has performed and lectured at various American churches, universities, colleges, NPR, Pacifica, college, and community radio stations, high schools, elementary schools and community centers including all over the world online.