Beverly Hills Composer Doesn’t Make Music the Old-Fashioned Way

Michael Robinson is a composer of the modern age.

Unlike composers of yesteryear, the Beverly Hills resident uses high-tech equipment to create his music.

Since 1985, he has written compositions exclusively for the computer, and it has produced some rather unusual sounds.

Robinson composes music with traditional notations on paper before it is translated and encoded into the computer. From there the sound module (a synthesizer without a keyboard) generates synthesized sounds through two speakers. It can simultaneously produce 32 voices, or lines, in eight timbres. “The computer is the vehicle for which the music travels through,” the 37-year-old New York native said. “It brings out parts of our experiences better than traditional music because it’s a limitless media.”

Robinson discovered an interest in music as a high school student playing the saxophone He earned a bachelor’s degree in music composition at the State University of New York at Potsdam and took classes from musical greats such as Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center in western Massachusetts.

For several years he wrote string quartets and other musical compositions, yet he felt something was missing from his music and sought to make a change.

“I wasn’t achieving the results that I wanted,” he said. “You can only play one instrument at a time. I gradually began (experimenting) with a computer synthesizer.”

At 8 p.m. Thursday, Robinson will perform a concert at St. Augustine By-the-Sea Church in Santa Monica. The recital will feature recent compositions, including the world premiere of the three-piece movement “First Instrument.”

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Joseph Aguayo has been named director of UCLA Extension’s business and management department.

Aguayo is a former senior consultant for the National Urban Fellows Inc. and chief executive officer and president of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Assn. He graduated from Cathedral College in Brooklyn and earned a master’s of science degree from Columbia University.

He was also the first recipient of the National Urban Fellows Fellowship given by the National League of Cities and Yale University.

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Timothy Miller was reelected historian of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery during the 26th annual scientific meeting last month in Boston.

Miller, a professor of surgery at UCLA School of Medicine and chief of plastic surgery at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, is a graduate of the UC Berkeley and completed his medical degree at UCLA. He is a resident of Los Angeles.

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The Jewish Federation Council awarded its 1992 Endowment Achievement Award of the Council of Jewish Federations to Martin Appel, immediate past president of the Jewish Community Foundation.

The Beverly Hills resident is an attorney with the law firm Hill Wynne Troop & Meisinger in Los Angeles. He was chosen for his leadership and dedication to the federation’s endowment funds.

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The West Los Angeles College Foundation recently elected Wayne Munsey president of the college’s support organization.

Munsey is a longtime board member of the foundation. Paul Jacobs, former mayor of Culver City and an attorney, also joined the foundation’s board of directors.

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The West Coast Father’s Day Council has selected Brentwood resident Norman Mirman as a recipient of a “Father of the Year” award.

Mirman, who established the Mirman School for gifted children with his wife 30 years ago, will be honored June 8 at a luncheon in Los Angeles.

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