March 11, 1956 ~ June 29, 2026 

Life

Born in New York, New York, in 1956, Robinson was raised in Long Island, NY, earning the Louis Armstrong award in 1974.^[6] Robinson studied at SUNY Potsdam (with a BM in Composition from the Crane School of Music) followed by graduate study at CalArts.^[7] Private studies included jazz improvisation with Lee Konitz,^[8] Paul Jeffrey, Ken McIntyre and Indian classical music with Harihar Rao and Pandit Jasraj – as well as composition studies with John Cage, Morton Feldman, David Lewin, Charles Dodge and Steve Reich.^[9] Additional education included summer programs at Tanglewood with Leonard Altman, Gunther Schuller, Jacob Druckman, John Chowning, Ralph Shapey and Leonard Bernstein.^[10][9]

As a composer and musicologist, Robinson has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College,^[11] California State University at Long Beach and California State University at Dominguez Hills. His recordings are in the music library collections of New York University, Princeton University,^[12] and the University of California at Los Angeles. A comprehensive collection of Robinson’s scores are used for study and teaching purposes at New York University.^[13]

MORE INFORMATION

Michael Robinson is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, pianist and musicologist.

He voices and colors his compositions with instrumental timbres and scale tunings from diverse world music cultures including India, Africa, the Near East, Japan, China, Korea, Bali, Java, Cuba, Brazil, Australia, Europe, North America and Southeast Asia.

Robinson composes using traditional Western notation and programs a computer and electronic sound module to perform his music in real time without overdubbing. 

“I’m interested in discovering and liberating the expressive quality – the essence – of computer-performed music. I want this music to emanate from the computer in the same way other sounds emanate in nature, like wind and water.” (Michael Robinson quoted in Keyboard)

Statement from Michael Robinson:

Asked about my approach to composition and performance, one thought is the reimagining of musical syntax from jazz and Indian classical music through prisms of personal temperament and body chemistry guided by raga elements. Ragas are a wondrous musical form from India believed to be based in divinity, and used as a basis for improvisation and composition with unlimited developmental potential. European classical, rock, and myriad American popular and esoteric forms are part of who I am musically, too.

Meruvina is my orchestra and instrument at once, consisting of a sound module with sampled and synthesized timbres, a computer, and miraculous software programmed to perform my compositions in real time working from fully notated scores. Meruvina is a name invented by combining my initials, MER, together with the Sanskrit word for musical instrument, “vina”. “Mer” was extended to “Meru” when I recalled the mythological mountain where the Hindu gods reside, Mount Meru. My reason for devising a new musical moniker came with the realization that beautiful sounding instruments deserve beautiful sounding names as opposed to technical, scientific designations. For example, we don’t call the flute the “metal blowhole”, or the piano the “wooden-boxed, metallic-hammered mechanism”!

I compose for close, even meditational, listening on both intellectual and spiritual planes, including elements of adbhuta rasa (wonderment, exhilaration), shanta rasa (tranquility, peace), and veera rasa (majesty, valor). Rasas are nine transcendental emotional states or sentiments forming the aesthetic basis of Indian music, drama and dance, reflecting the belief that all of human experience may be described as expressing one or several combined rasas. In confluence with the concept of rasa, every composition has a unique personality I endeavor to enhance through vibrant musical color, melody, rhythm, language and architecture. 

Azure Miles Records was formed to present the changing seasons of my music. The name of my label is after William Butler Yeats, “Maybe in some isle of isles, In the South Seas azure miles…” and I now have a catalog of 200 albums from 1991 to the present. Cover art for each album uses hand silkscreen and hand woodblock printed papers from Japan, India, and Nepal. I choose these designs to reflect and enhance the music. Azure Miles and the poetic phrase it originates from brought to mind new musical vistas of previously unimagined beauty and enchantment.

Quality is my only musical consideration, and the amount of music I’ve composed and recorded seems entirely natural. Perhaps part of the reason for my prolificacy is how notation only begins after a composition is completed internally without any changes made after the score is finished. Pencil is used because occasionally there is a misstroke that needs to be erased and corrected. I also much prefer the feeling of pencil on paper.

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Adding to an oeuvre of nearly 500 compositions, Michael is a writer (musicologist) focusing mostly upon music, but also art, basketball and other topics.

In recent years, Robinson began developing a personal style of jazz piano and jazz improvisation drawing upon his jazz and Indian classical music orientations at once, uncovering new connections between the two traditions.

There are 200 albums available from Azure Miles Records featuring the music of Michael Robinson, including 153 albums for Meruvina, and 47 albums of piano improvisations. Azure Miles albums may be heard on NPR, Pacifica, college, and community radio stations. These recordings are in the collections of many music libraries with complete catalogs at New York University, Princeton University, and the University of California at Los Angeles. A comprehensive collection of the composer’s scores are available for study and teaching purposes at New York University.

Robinson has given numerous solo concerts in New York City, Los Angeles and Maui; music-visual performances and installations at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles and Borders; and live radio concerts in New York City and Los Angeles. He has been interviewed numerous times on radio in New York City, Los Angeles and Berkeley by a host of distinguished interviewers, in addition to several cable television interviews.

The composer was awarded the Louis Armstrong Award in New York; received six grants from Meet the Composer California; and The City of Pasadena gave him a grant to introduce school children to Indian classical music, world music, and computer music. UCLA’s Department of Ethnomusicology received a one year grant from the National Endowment For The Humanities that enabled them to hire Robinson to transfer fragile field recordings from all over the world onto CDRs.

Robinson has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College, and California State University. He has over 250 Writings About Music of varying lengths, including a series of interviews with Indian masters and a jazz master. These writings have been quoted by Carnegie Hall and MIT publications; used for classes at CalArts, New York University and the University of California at Berkeley; and are included at the Bob Dylan Archive in Oklahoma. A university music department chair stated these writings deserve to be compiled in books.

He was born in Manhattan’s French Hospital in Chelsea, and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and North Merrick and Wantagh, Long Island.

Robinson received a BM in Composition from the Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam, where he studied composition with Don Funes, Elliot Del Borgo and Arthur Frackenpohl, and also Bulent Arel at SUNY Stony Brook. This was followed by graduate study with Mel Powell at CalArts. He spent two summers at Tanglewood in the Listening and Analysis Seminar taught by musicologists Leonard Altman and Peter Gram Swing. Altman made special arrangements for Robinson to attend the Composition Seminar taught by Gunther Schuller, Jacob Druckman, Paul Zukofsky, John Chowning and Ralph Shapey. He also attended conducting classes and rehearsals of the Boston Symphony Orchestra given by Leonard Bernstein and other prominent conductors.

Robinson’s private studies include jazz improvisation with Lee Konitz, Rollan Masciarelli, Paul Jeffrey and Makanda Ken McIntyre; and Indian classical music with Harihar Rao (the senior disciple of Ravi Shankar), Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, Pandit Jasraj, Anindo Chatterjee, Swapan Chaudhuri and Kala Ramnath. He had private composition lessons with Leonard Stein, and composition consultations with Charles Dodge, David Lewin, Steve Reich (via correspondence), John Cage, Salvatore Martirano and Morton Feldman.

The composer’s unique involvement with Indian ragas is largely a result of his study of recordings, live performances, and books, in addition to the studies mentioned above. He is self-taught in using the meruvina.

A native New Yorker, Robinson resides in Los Angeles and Maui.

EVEN MORE –

Early Life and Education

Childhood and Early Awards

Michael Eric Robinson was born on March 11, 1956, in Manhattan’s French Hospital in Chelsea, New York City. He spent his early childhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, before his family relocated to North Merrick and later Wantagh on Long Island’s South Shore. Growing up in these suburban New York environments, Robinson developed an early fascination with music, shaped by both familial traditions and community influences.His family’s musical household played a pivotal role in igniting his interest. Robinson’s mother frequently performed classical compositions and Rodgers and Hart songs on the piano, while his father avidly listened to classical recordings and radio programs, with Johannes Brahms as his favorite composer; the elder Robinson even attended weekly broadcasts of Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra concerts. This domestic immersion in Western classical music provided Robinson’s foundational exposure during his youth. Locally, at Camp Avenue Elementary School in North Merrick, band instructor Ben DiDia recognized Robinson’s aptitude through musical tests in second or third grade, recommending he take up the trumpet due to his large hands and using his playing as a model for other students.Robinson’s initial forays into jazz emerged alongside his classical pursuits. After a sixth-grade football injury sidelined his trumpet playing, piano lessons with the encouraging Mrs. Joffe introduced him to beginner works by German masters, reinforcing his classical roots. Teacher Barney Bragin later expanded his horizons by teaching boogie-woogie, improvisation, and selections from Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Impressions of Eurasia, which incorporated Eastern elements and marked Robinson’s first significant encounter with jazz. In high school, music director Richard Baffa appointed him band president, and theory instructor Rollan Masciarelli guided him in jazz improvisation through transcriptions of Charlie Parker and Lester Young, leading to intensive daily practice and explorations of artists like John Coltrane. As a culmination of these high school endeavors, Robinson received the Louis Armstrong Jazz Award in 1974 for his burgeoning jazz talents.