Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music?

When I was three years old, my parents bought a pianoforte for the domicile. I sat down at the piano and immediately started playing. I remember saying to myself "I've done this before".

Who or what were the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer and pianist?

As I say in my concerts, I have been influenced by everyone, admired many, but I listen to no other music except my own. My about significant musical influence was Phil Cohen, director of the Leonardo Projection at Concordia University who re-trained me afterward i developed tendonitis in my early on twenty'due south. My about significant collaboration is with Klaus Hoch, my director-producer and the co-developer of the Refractor Pianoforte™.

What have been the greatest challenges/frustrations of your career and then far?

Certainly, not existence able to perform for over a decade due to my tendonitis was a huge challenge. However, if this had not happened, I would never have learned nigh humility and appreciation.I cull non to dwell on the negative elements, only the joys of creating!

Tell us more than virtually your Refractor Pianoforte™ and your "Refracted Music"….

I always strive to swim the uncharted waters. Although I had worked extensively with synths, samplers, and virtual instruments, equally technology developed and more than people started using them, I realized this was my time to create even so another genre that had never been done before. I set up the criteria that this new instrument, The Refractor Pianoforte™ and the music that comes from it, would exist completely "live: no pre-recorded tracks, no synths, samples, or virtual instruments: just an acoustic piano beingness fed into the Refractor. I design the sounds for each piece in software, and then utilise various live- operation techniques including pedals, faders, and the pianoforte itself to constantly alter and "Refract" the sounds and of grade, the music Klaus Hoch,was "instrumental" in shrinking the concrete footprint, developing the software, and refining the "environments" that I utilise to create the compositions. Each piece has its own refracted world and each composition is very different. It really doesn't fit into a specific genre…ane has to feel it. It is not "sound pattern, new age, or whatever other type of passive music.

For me, it is a bully challenge combining composition, operation, improvisation, programming, and the aleatoric nature of this new instrument. If one hears one of my pieces x times,they will certainly recognize information technology through the motifs, melodies, and sounds, simply the internal construction of the piece will be different every time.

As a composer, how practice you piece of work?

Each limerick is different, only I use the Taoist concept "let your mind be empty…" then whatever fills information technology becomes the starting place. One time I have the initial idea, it's a lot like the cracking sculptor Henry Moore's quote: "How do I sculpt a face up? I but remove anything that is not a face". Usually for me, information technology's most removing anything that doesn't fit or lead to a direct musical experience within the limerick. Because traditional note is useless with the Refractor Piano™, I take developed many ways of documenting what I am doing. I then constantly record and make adjustments in order to see the progression of the piece.

What do you consider to be the well-nigh important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Delight listen to your inner voice..information technology will tell you what to practice, where to go. Sympathise that this vocalism volition constantly change and develop as your life experiences happen. Everyone volition take an opinion… yours is the i that matters. Be humble and open to others. Be appreciative for everything that y'all accept!

Where would you like to exist in x years' fourth dimension?

I practise not think of the hereafter or the past…we merely have the present, so make the most of every day.

What is your present land of mind?

I get to create music that has never existed before now. I become to share it with new people who are greatly moved by it. I become to feel life with joy and exuberance…what could exist ameliorate?

Peter Manning Robinson is a pianist, an Emmy and multiple BMI honor winning composer, inventor of The Refractor PianoTM and vegan chef. Performing live with his newly created Refractor PianoTM, Peter plays a new way of music called "Refracted Music". Without prerecorded tracks, triggered samples, external sounds or MIDI instruments, he creates a unique new music using just an acoustic pianoforte that is "refracted" during his live performances. Peter's foundations in classical construction and jazz improvisation induce a transcendent musical experience.

Peter Manning Robinson was built-in in Chicago and grew up in Vancouver, Canada and Los Angeles, California. Peter started playing the piano at age 3 and began performing with bands by the fourth dimension he was 12. Though touring and playing in clubs at a immature age, he yet managed to receive formal music training at USC and Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has performed and recorded with such jazz greats as Ernie Watts, Phil Woods and Freddie Hubbard. Peter's motion picture and television set scores have won him many awards including an Emmy Award for KABC'south ​Above and Beneath​and five BMI Music Awards for ​Without a Trace​. His orchestral works accept been recorded by members of the London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Sleeping accommodation Orchestra, and Musica Nova.

In his early on 20s, Peter developed astringent tendonitis and was told past numerous doctors he would never be able to perform live once again. Still able to play for short periods of time, he immersed himself in session work and picture scores only was determined to resume alive concertizing. Through a mutual friend, Peter met Phil Cohen, Founder/Artistic Manager of the Leonardo Project at Concordia University in Montreal. Subsequently evaluating Peter, Phil told him he could retrain him but he would have to, in Phil'southward words: "unlearn everything you know about playing the piano." Peter agreed and through Phil'south techniques, he developed a completely new mode of playing inside a year.

During this fourth dimension Peter continued to evolve his already healthy lifestyle to comprehend vegan nutrient, meditation, yoga, kick­boxing and growing his own herbs and produce. An achieved vegan chef, he uses a unique nutritional regimen to continue his mind, body and spirit optimally fit. Peter views both his Refractor Piano™ and his kitchen equally "laboratories" where his complex cooking recipes inspire new music compositions and vice­ versa.

He met director and filmmaker Klaus Hoch while scoring Klaus'due south moving-picture show ​Flypaper ​and​reconnected in 2010 to collaborate on the cosmos of the Refractor Piano™. The Refractor Piano™ is the culmination of Peter's life­long work and experimentation with alternative forms of musical instruments (audio-visual, Asian and electronic). In April 2016, Peter presented his acclaimed debut concert with The Refractor Piano™ at Bergamot Station, Santa Monica incorporating both his Refractor Piano™ and audio-visual piano compositions with unique visual elements.

The Refractor Piano™ Refractor Music

The Refractor Piano™ is an acoustic piano (commonly a Steinway), fitted with transducers and microphones, whose live sound is "refracted" through a unique, proprietary system of hardware and software created by pianist­-composer Peter Manning Robinson and co­developed by filmmaker Klaus Hoch.

Mimicking visual refraction or quantum refraction, the instrument, when played by Peter, is capable of generating a remarkable array of never ­heard­ earlier sounds. The music incorporates both composition and improvisation and while each piece is always recognizable, the "refraction" procedure makes each functioning unique and never an exact reproduction. One can call back of the "refraction" process as layers of audio that are uniquely manipulated, morphed and layered. These sounds create chambers that open and catamenia, in numerous ways, to other chambers that tin exist individually or intersect and "refract" each other. This creates an ever­-changing, evolving sound.

Peter decides which elements to "refract" in real fourth dimension and "rides the refractions" as he and The Refractor Piano™ bends and morphs the audio. These new textures form the distinct instruments and voices of each composition. Using the entire piano ­­­inside and out­­­ with his fingers, mallets, and other implements, Peter conjures never­ heard­ before sounds in this new type of music. Thus Peter is functioning every bit a composer, pianist, and conductor in existent time. With compositional foundations in classical structure and jazz improvisation, the new "Refractor Music" played by Peter creates a truly unique, transcendent live music experience. "Refractor Music" needs to be heard live!

www.petermanningrobinson.com

(Photo: Michael Reuter)