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The purpose of Musical Kaleidoscope Project is not just the discovery and resurrection of great music from past cultures, but also the creation of new music. As today's young composers and musicians learn from the great global music traditions of the past, fresh inspiration will spawn new uplifting music for the 21st century, in a change of direction from discords that invaded classical and popular music during the previous one-hundred years. On this page are some examples of music that I have composed.

Don Robertson


The "Southern Wind" String Quartet

Don Robertson's Southern Wind String Quartet - The first movement, performed on March 2, 2014 in Nashville, Tennessee. "In early 1990 decided that I would compose a string quartet, an orchestral composition and a choral one, and that I did. I call my composition for quartet "Southern Wind" because at the same time that I composed it, I was hanging out in Southern Pentecostal churches researching gospel music. A group of Nashville friend musicians performed the first movement of the four-movement work in a concert held on March, 2014. The video was made by Nashville documentary filmmaker Patrick Sheehan. Thank you, friend. Synthesized versions of the other movements are available at my website: www.DonRobertsonMusic.com


Take My Hand

Mary Ellen Bickford and I made this video of a song that we wrote along with my cousin Ashe Owen of Denver, Colorado and Taos, NM. Mary Ellen has tremendous talent, a true visionary artist of the 21st century, and her work on this video was extraordinary, with only the primitive tools of a 2008 version of Apple motion to realize her vision. Take My Hand Website


Le Jardin Enchanté

I created this piece of music with my synclavier II digital synthesizer and programming language in the summer of 1983, after one of my visits to magic Mount Shasta. I was living in Santa Rosa, California them. Its a chaconne or passacaglia with an ostinato figure that I think I came up with accidently music so French for me, and my best friend was French, and so I gave it its name in french. I wanted to make a video and so in 2009, when I was in Paris, I went to Monet's garden in Givenry and videoed and photographed it. Monet was a great french impressionist painter who used this same garden to inspire his transfigured canvases. I wanted to do the same thing. Thus Monet's garden has been transformed impressionistly, 21st-century style.


Misty Interlude

The music is a 1916 improvisation that I videoed one morning just as the sun was rising. My keyboard music is improvised. Improvising music is the same thing as composing music - there is no difference. A natural composer, like a natural painter, can see the canvas before his eyes before he has painted it, hears the composition clearly in his mind, then either plays or sings the notes (improvise), or writes them down (rapidly!)(compose). I began developing my improvisations beginning in the year 1971, after I was given a new style of music in a dream. I use harmonic scale and chord notes only, and I use simple modes with seventh chords, a style I developed on my own from years of loving the music from my major influences: North Indian classical , 19th century romantic classical , Django Reinhardt, B.B. King, Early 1950s popular music, Renaissance sacred choral music and Gregorian chant.

Tuning is A=432 - a more harmonious tuning than the standard A=440 in current use.


Evening Climbing Ladders

The poem "Evening Climbing Ladders" came to me one morning in 2015. I wrote it down in about ten minutes. I played around with the melody off and on for a year or so, then recorded i and made the video. I sang all the parts and my friend Paris Delane (with the deep voice) created the recitation for the middle section of the song. I wrote that recitation in about two minutes. The song has a deep message - a warning about the instability of the conditions in our world, as well as a solution - mediation and spiritual awakening. Musically, the verses of the song are in the dorian mode on C using 7th chords, chorus sections are in Eb Lydian Mode. The song ends on a IIMin9th chord. Tuning is A=432.


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