Harmonious World #30 Peter Manning Robinson

Another fascinating discussion that I hope you will enjoy. For this - episode 30 - I was joined online by composer, pianist and inventor of the Refractor Piano(TM), Peter Manning Robinson.

'Double Helix' is out now, and it contains two CDs of music that I think you will love. If you can, please do look at Peter's website and watch some of the beautiful videos.

In our conversation, we discussed the album, Peter's amazing history as a musician, and being vegan. To find out more about him and to watch those videos, click here.

Thank you for listening to Harmonious World. Please rate, review and share: click on the link and subscribe to support the show.

Don't forget the Quincy Jones quote that sums up why I do this: "Imagine what a harmonious world it would be if every single person, both young and old, shared a little of what he is good at doing."

Transcript

Hilary 0:00

Hello, this is Hilary Robertson. Welcome to episode 30 of Harmonious World. This week I'm joined by pianist and composer Peter Manning Robinson, whose debut double album Double Helix is out now on Heart Dance Records. It's a very hard album to classify, and there's a very good reason for that. Half of it, so one CD, is dedicated to music performed on Peter's own invention, the refractor piano, and then half is acoustic solo piano. The two CDs are very different, but they work well together, which is why the album is called Double Helix. Peter is a renowned pianist and he's played with just about everybody. And in this podcast, he talks about working with filmmaker and producer Klaus Hoch. It's very difficult to categorize Peter's playing and especially using the refractor piano, but it is beautiful, beautiful music that I hope you will enjoy, and I hope you will listen to it once you've enjoyed our conversation. Hello. Hello. Hi, nice to hear. How are you? I'm good, thank you, Peter.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

How are you? I'm doing great. I'm a little horse from running hills in the rain in sunny Los Angeles. Other than that, I am fine.

Hilary 1:26

Okay, well, I have no sympathy for you because it's very snowy and icy here. Yeah. Thank you for joining me. This is for my podcast, Harmonious World. And I'm fascinated to talk to you about double helix. How did you come up with the concept of having the two discs that are so very different?

SPEAKER_00 1:52

So when my my collaborator Klaus Hog, who directs and produces my videos and he co-produced the uh the album with me, we were talking about what we wanted to do. He was saying, Well, Peter, your solo acoustic piano music is so different than the music that you play with your invention, the refractor piano, and yet it's still coming from the same person. And then he says, you know, it's sort of like a strand of DNA, the two sides. Ah, double helix, there we go. And so that's how uh the initial concept started.

Hilary 2:34

Because they do they do sound like, well, initially they sound like two different albums. But when you break down the refractor piano, it's still you.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yes, and as very similar to my acoustic piano work, I'm improvising, but I'm improvising on themes, and everything is live. So whether you're hearing just a one piano or you're hearing this whole cacophony of sounds, it's still coming out of the same piano. And the more you listen to my music, the more you realize, oh yeah, this is the same guy, it's just he's wearing a different suit today.

Hilary 3:18

Right. Is it the same piano and you just add so it is? You just add this stuff, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

So if you I don't know if you can see, here's my piano. I have very little furniture in my house, I have a very simple lifestyle, but I have three Steinway pianos. So that is my that that's my vice. So think of the refractor piano the same way you think of refraction in science. So that in science, when you have a wave, such as sound or light, it passes through a prism. The incoming signal is unaffected, but when it goes through the prism, it becomes refracted or morphed or changed. So that's what happens here. So it's my acoustic piano is completely like any other. If if I go on the road and I have to play somebody else's acoustic piano, I can just hook up my my invention to that piano. And everything is happening live. So there's no pre-recorded tracks, there's no MIDI instruments, there's no triggered samples, all of the sounds emanate from the piano itself.

Hilary 4:29

Right. And you so you said you have three Steinweise switches.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yes.

Hilary 4:35

Crazy. This is but I think it's crazy in a good way.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

I think I hope so.

Hilary 4:42

Yeah. Um, so can so you can just move the refractor piano device, your invention, between those pianos and between any other piano.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yes. Now, because each piano sounds different, what comes out is different. So if so, if I'm doing a concert in another city where I'm not taking my piano, this is, of course, remembering a time when there were concerts and one could travel to other places to play, then I have to spend some time getting to know that piano and making adjustments to see what it's going to sound like. But effectively, this is very true. So the re the the invention itself is very small. It's a small little rack and it's a little Mac Pro and some pedals, and uh it takes about an hour to uh to put it on the other piano. Doesn't damage it at all. Uh, and it's uh and then off we go.

Hilary 5:43

Right. When you play live, do you so you you can't do half a gig on it without the refractor and half a gig with the refractor. It has to be either absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

When I do my concerts, that's it, that's pretty much what I do. Uh depending on the audience, um, I work a lot with uh not only with Klaus, who's a filmmaker and visual artist, but another person named Hannah Kim, who works with a lot of uh the operas domestically and foreign. And there's she and they have a whole series of visual effects that they improvise with while I'm playing. So I also tell stories and I talk about my life and what's going on and how the pieces became developed. So I will always do here's a refractor piano, now here's an acoustic piano piece, and I mix it up and just depends on the audience.

Hilary 6:39

Wow, it does sound amazing. I I I really um I was thinking as I was preparing to interview you, I was sort of sort of jumping between the two CDs to see which track I preferred, and actually I prefer them all in different ways.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Tell me.

Hilary 7:00

Well, I think the I think the refractor C D, um, so I secret source and fugitive heart are definitely my two favourite. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Is not you know is not important. Why? You know, we just listen and then we feel, and this is what we do.

Hilary 7:22

Absolutely. And I and then I was going back to the acoustic piano, and um oh, undying spirit. Oh, I love that. Where did that one come from?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

So about two years ago, uh I was given a dog and uh through my ex-girlfriend. And uh, well, she's still my girlfriend, I shouldn't say that. We're we we morphed, we've refracted. In any case, uh she could not she could no longer keep Coco, who's this little beast of an eight-pound Pomerania. And I've never had small dogs, and it's like, no, I can't take a dog. Oh, come on, take it for two weeks, everything will be fine. Well, the two weeks turned into two and a half years, so everything's going fine. I'm getting acclimated, and then she gets hepatitis, and the dog is only two years old. Oh, and so now it's she's just deathly sick, and she and I'm having to take her to vet after vet after vet, and it's just daily stuff, and she can hardly get out of bed, and she hates getting her meds, and yet her spirit was just so strong, and so I I remember one day she was just like sitting at my feet, just kind of looking at me like, you know, come on, and she goes, and I thought, God, this undine spirit, she won't give up, and she didn't, and now even though she still has remnants of the disease, she's like back to her normal self. And uh she I'd have her here, but she decided to go into a barking fit, so I had to uh I had to sequester her. But that's that's where that comes from, you know, this just feeling not just from from animals and people, but look what's happening to the planet right now. You know, we can we can choose to hate and we can choose to be negative, or we can just say, no, this isn't good or bad, this just is. Now, how do we thrive under these circumstances?

Hilary 9:37

Wow, that's fascinating. You strike me as somebody who is very spiritual and in touch with the the planet in in the deepest sense, I think. Um we we are both vegans, which is great. How long have you been vegan?

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Uh all I'll almost my whole adult life. Uh, and I remember the exact moment when it happened. Another girlfriend at the time said, I want to go to the zoo. And I'm thinking, oh God, already I was hating like zoos and all of that. I said, All right, I'll go with you. So we're standing at the outside of the zoo waiting to get tickets, and this chicken walks up to me. And this chicken, I don't I don't know what spirit or entity was in this chicken, but this wasn't a normal chicken. And the chicken started talking to me. And I walked over to a little bench and I sat down, the chicken walked over. It was like and I couldn't look at this chicken as food. This was like a sentient bean. And from that point on, I said, I can't do this. And then I started doing research. And at that time, um uh John Robbins' book, Diet for New America, uh, had just come out. And I was so affected by not just the idea of what it's doing to animals, but what it does to the planet, the economic, the environmental. And here's a guy who is an heir to a multi-million dollar fortune who says, no, forget it. And he walks away and he goes to Vancouver Island, he lives on practically nothing and raises his family, you know, way before there was any indication that this was going to be such a worldwide trend. And so I just then and then I found like, well, God, I'm trying to eat vegan, but if I go out, I hate this food. It all tastes like cardboard. Now what do I do? So then I started learning how to cook, and I found what and I developed recipes and uh and then I started growing my own food, and it just became part of my straight edge lifestyle that I have, which is you know, no drugs, no alcohol, no tobacco, vegan. Uh, I exercise like a demon, you know, it's and I'm happy, you know. That's the thing. That's what I try to tell everybody when they say, Why do you do it? I said, Well, I live my life a certain way for a period of time. I live my life now this way. I feel better. I'm happy. Why would I not want to do this?

Hilary 12:25

Right. I and I feel exactly the same. And I've become quite passionate about the planet and how we can stop being so wasteful and all of that stuff. And I frantically collect litter everywhere I go and all of that sort of stuff. So I'm absolutely with you on all of that.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

How long have you been vegan?

Hilary 12:47

Uh, on and off since I was 20. I was a sax player and I played in a pop band. And they were there were two camps. They were either, you know, meat eaters and you know, everything else, or they were pretty much vegan. And I sort of went to that, that seemed to make sense to me to be vegan, and and so I've been doing it mostly since then, but every now and then I'll sort of veer off a little bit. But now I'm completely for about the last eight years, I've been completely vegan, no alcohol, I've never smoked, you know, so I've just really, really been living clean. And I like you, I feel very happy.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah. What once you get all that other stuff out of your system, you just see things differently. And as you said, when it happens for us as individuals, we cannot help but look at the bigger picture. What's happening with the family, what's happening with our friends, what's happening to the planet. And I will say I have mixed emotions about how being plant-based has become so commercialized, and you've got all of this chemically grown food, which I'm not so sure is any better than the other stuff, but I understand it because it takes a long time to cook correctly if you're vegan. It's not like, okay, put the shit put the chicken in the oven. Okay, it's done. You know, there's all these other things that you have to create.

Hilary 14:25

But actually, um, just as musically, there's something about the the creation process, which I think is part of the love of food, is also the love of music. It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Absolutely. Absolutely. I when people say, Where do you get these ideas? I say, it's the same way, place that I get my ideas for my music. You know, I can be playing and coming up with a new composition, and all of a sudden, oh that would taste great. I could do this and this and this and this and this, and that becomes my new recipe. Or I'm running in the hills, and all of a sudden it's like, that's the issue. That's what I can do. And Da Vinci worked this way, Chopin worked this way. They would torture themselves, like, oh, it's not working, it's not working, it's not working. Okay, I'm getting the hell out of here. They would leave, and within a hundred yards, it would be like, that's the answer, that's what I needed to do. Yeah. So I advocate very strongly less thinking, more feeling.

Hilary 15:32

That's fantastic. So I looked to one of your videos on Instagram, and you were talking about creation and the create the the creativity, and uh one of the things that you were talking about was transcribing your pieces that you play for on acoustic piano for other people to play.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Yes.

Hilary 15:56

How is that project going?

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Well, right now, because I'm having to finish a couple of other projects, it is still uh conceptual. But uh it I'm hoping within the next two weeks, once I finish what I'm doing right now, to start it. And it's a very interesting thing because I've come up with a way, since every time I play a piece, yes, the theme is the same, the motif is the same, the concept is the same, but it's constantly changing. So then you say, well, all right, how can I impart this to a let's call them a legit classical player who wants to play my music but doesn't improvise and doesn't think that way? So how can I create alternative sections and different ways of approaching the things? Because it's not it's not jazz and it's not classical music, and it's not Penderecki who does art pieces and then he has an orchestra that works with for 20 years. So it's been an interesting way conceptualizing it so that okay, this is what I can do, and then hopefully uh in the next month it'll I'll be able to start it. Brilliant. So how have you found lockdown? Well, one, I find it fascinating if I think of this in a spiritual way. If this had happened 10 or 15 years ago, lockdown would be completely different. And I think the number of people that would that would really, really suffer would be so much greater simply because not only did social media, it was in its infancy, but Zoom and and all of these other forms of communicating wouldn't exist. So I grew up, let's say very differently. Um, I'm a sexual abuse survivor, I was on the streets when I was 12, but I was also touring when I was 12. I've been playing since I was three. And so many people would say I've had a hard life, but I say, no, I've had a life, and everything that has happened to me has created who I am and how I play and how I see the world. So I see events not as good or bad, they're just events. Now, how do you adjust to them? How do you thrive in a situation like this? So it forced me to be more active on social media, it forced me to go inward in certain ways. But other than not being able to do concerts, I still create my music exactly the way I do. I can't, uh, if I need other musicians to do it, okay, great. I go online, they send me stuff, I you know, I work with it. I communicate with friends each year. The only party I ever have is New Year's Eve, where I invite my close friends. So this year we had a Zoom New Year's Eve party, you know, and everybody laughed and had a great time. And this is something that we have to do. Maybe you're like me, and I believe that in a certain way the planet has said to us, you know, screw you. You have been abusing me long enough, and now I'm fighting back. You know, other people say it's this, other people say it's that, but it doesn't matter. These are stories we tell ourselves. It's what we do with the thing. So I don't think about it. It's just okay, I wear a mask, I take care of myself, I make sure that my immune system is bolstered by you know tons of herbs and supplements and healthy plant-based food. And you go on day to day. You you don't let it upset you. That's how I'm dealing with it.

Hilary 19:44

Yeah, it is fascinating. It's really interesting to talk to you. Um, so tell me about the recording process for double helix. Um, how long did it take? What order did you do things? Did you how did you play around? Did you know how did it work?

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Okay. So have you seen any of my longer form concert videos? Did you see any of those? Okay. I strongly urge you go to my website and look at some of those. Not only I think you will find them fascinating, but you'll see a very different side of me where the compositions are much more developed and in conjunction with some of the visual images. When we started working, we were talking with a few different record companies. And Klaus had this concept that because so much of my music tends to be very highly developed with longer forms, a lot of bigger builds, crescende, diminuende, all of these different things. He said, No, let's do a record where it's very closely contained, that one can listen to it, but if they put it on in the car, they're going to feel good about it. And I said, Well, I don't do that. And then as soon as I said that, I said, Okay, great. I just said why I should do it. And then we met with a few different companies, and then when we met with Heart Dance, Heart Dance heard a live demonstration. I played some things, and they said, Well, this is fantastic, but I mean you're obviously a genius, but we don't know what to do with it. We said, Okay, what if we were to modify it a slightly? And they said, Yes, we'd like to hear some of that. So, well, so the way I worked was that I started with the refractory music, and Klaus, I would send a piece to Klaus and the agreement that we had, because we were co-producing it. I've never done this, given that much control over to somebody before. But if he didn't like it, we didn't use it. If I didn't like it, we didn't use it. So then I would send him sections and he'd go, No, no, no, no, no. Oh, that little piece I like. So, okay, great. So I work on that. And I totally surrendered to that process because he wouldn't because the agreement was he would never reference any other musicians or pieces of music, because I never listened to anybody. And he would never compare it to anything else I do. He would just say, I like, I don't like. And after we did five or six of them, I started seeing, oh, this is what he's going for. Oh, I see. And uh-huh, all right. So then I'd go back and do them. And then after we got the refractor pieces done, uh, I started doing the acoustic piano pieces and the same process, which is okay, can't be too fast, can't be too slow, can't be too big, can't be too small. And within this little constraint, how far can you take it? How deep can you go into the creative process? And then we had an album, and then it was supposed to come out in March, and then uh kaboom hits, and uh we say, well, okay, now we gotta wait. But in the meantime, it gave me so many ideas for new things that I'm working on now. So that's that's kind of how the process works. One thing I will mention is that inventing an instrument that's never existed before and a way of playing, because if you watch me play and you see my videos, you're gonna see me playing inside the piano. I use mallets, I use I sing into the mic while I'm playing and process that. I do all these different things that are fairly unconventional. And you're sort of creating a new group of people to play with, you know. Oh, here's a new friend. I can do this. Oh, here's another new friend. Oh, look what I can do with this. And it's like having a bunch of me's kind of, you know, sometimes they squabble, sometimes they get along great, you know. Then you come to sort of the meaning of the heart, and everything works.

Hilary 23:51

That's amazing. It sounds like an incredible process, and I think it's interesting working with you're you're obviously a collaborator. You obviously work, you enjoy working with other people.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Do you I love working with other people if they are open to what I do? You said you played you you played saxophone.

Hilary 24:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

I don't know if you're familiar with a jazz saxophonist named Ernie Watts.

Hilary 24:19

Oh, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Okay, so Ernie is my oldest friend. I met him when I was 11 years old, uh, for one of my first road experiences. So Ernie's normal orientation is kind of straight-ahead jazz, right? And he's a master at it. But he loves coming over to my place and we record pieces where he will he will play and I'll refract him live while he's playing. And he'll play into the piano, and then I process that while we're playing, and then he moves away. And because he's open to that, you know, so he'll so I'll have him do whole pieces where he'll just play the saxophone mouthpiece, not the saxophone itself. And he likes being challenged. There's um there's a brilliant Brazilian rapper, uh, quite famous in Brazil named Pregador Luo. And uh he heard my stuff online, and uh he says, Oh man, we got to do something. So I send him a track and he sends me something. And so, like, it's a whole other world, hip hop, you know. But as long as people are open, I love it. If people say no, here are the rules and you have to follow that's like no, that's not so good for me. So I kind of pick and choose what I want to do.

Hilary 25:37

That's brilliant. One of the musicians that I miss that I wish I'd seen is Miles Davis, and I think he he changed in and out and and did different things. I mean, you know, it was all jazz, but he sort of moved across around and about and worked with different people and things. And I I love that concept.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Can I give you a story about that?

Hilary 26:01

Yeah, please.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Okay, so as I said, I was I was touring when I was very, very young. And at the time, there was a club in Los Angeles where when I was 13, I was asked to be the house pianist in a certain band. And all of these wonderful, fantastic musicians used to come in, including Miles. And his pianist at the time was Herbie Hancock, and the band didn't really like me too much. And they were constantly saying, you got to change this, you got to play this, you got to play that. And I said, No, I'm not gonna do that. And so one time the band basically walked off the stage while I was playing. And I feel, you know, I'm like I'm like 12, 13 years old, and you know, I'm kind of I'm very mature, but I'm still like this little kid who gets crushed easily. And Herbie walked over to me and he says, Don't listen to anybody. You've got an original sound, you're going to be great. Just keep going. And then Miles kind of walks by and goes, Yeah. So I I've always been kind of surrounded by angels at times, you know, like where when you, you know, like when I'm on the streets, I was protected by Black Panthers, you know, who said, I don't care what your skin color is, we, you know, we love your music and we want to help. And I've just seen the world that way, you know, like you go through and you stay open and things happen. And when you need encouragement, you get encouragement, you know, when you need a kick in the butt, you get a kick in the butt.

Hilary 27:40

That's amazing. One of the things that I've really enjoyed about doing this podcast is that I've spoken to lots of different musicians who they're classical or their jazz or their folk or their rock or they're whatever. And yet for most of them, they don't talk, they don't pigeonhole themselves because why you know who needs to? And I think you you're a you're a fine example of that, actually, because the only people that need to pigeonhole your music are the people that sort it either in a record store or you know, on heaven forbid Spotify and those sort of things. You know, that's they're the only people that need to classify something.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

You're absolutely right. And in fact, one of the things that has been so difficult for us as we put out this new form of music is that the moment you go into the world of online and even with the record company, they want to know what do you call this music? What genre is it? You and now you have to pick one. It's sort of the difference between like writing an essay in school or doing multiple choice. Well, I'd much rather do the essay because multiple choice locks me in, or as you said, pigeonholes. So it's that part of it's been very frustrating. And so I do my best to when I speak to people, it's not educating, it's just allowing them in to see my world and to see things not as these rigid columns, but it's floating constantly like water or air. And it's a horrible thing that's happened to so many people. There's a Japanese saying, the nail that sticks out must be hammered in. And that's what happens to so many of us, you know. Right. You you you stray from the beaten path and whap, you know. So I said, go ahead, hit me. It's not gonna change anything. I'm gonna still do what I do.

Hilary 29:36

Right. And the and that's the opposite of what a lot of people do, which is kind of go, right, I'm gonna conform. I'm gonna, you know, a lot of it, a lot of music is is kind of copying, you know, it's kind of going, this works, therefore I'm gonna keep doing, I'm just gonna replicate it.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Well, especially now, because with all the algorithm music programs and libraries, and nobody learns how to actually play music, you know, and if you're out of tune, you know, you you you go do auto-tune. If uh if you don't know how to play a chord, no problem. You buy this with this uh little program and it creates the chords for you. But what people don't understand is that there's somebody behind that, and so everything that you're doing is emanating from the person who created that program. And it's it becomes so frustrating when I talk to people who have actually not sit down, sat down and played a real instrument. They don't understand like what happens when you put the embouchure in your mouth and you go beep, as opposed to you push a plastic key down and there's the saxophone. Well, it's a type of saxophone, but it's not that vibration that shakes through your body, no, and that changes everything.

Hilary 30:53

Indeed, absolutely um I could carry on talking to you forever. It's been absolutely fantastic, really interesting talking to you. And I will be keeping an eye on your website because I I don't care if I have to fly to LA when you're when you start performing live, I'm gonna come and hear you because I really want to I want to experience what you're what you do on stage, really do.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Ah, thank you so much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye, thanks.

Hilary 31:29

That was such a joy to interview Peter, was amazing, and uh he was very kind when we fit when we had finished and said that he'd enjoyed it too, which was really nice to hear. You know, some this is somebody who has played with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock, you know. Um I just want to say how much I'm enjoying doing Harmonious World. I hope you are enjoying listening. Please subscribe, please leave me a review. You can also buy me a coffee by clicking on the Buzz Sprout website and uh leaving me a small donation, that would be great. But thank you for listening. Please let me know what you think, and find me on social media. There, all the links are on the website, and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much for listening to Harmonious World.