Michael Robinson premieres and discusses his new album, A Parrot Sipping Tea, together with four earlier tracks, Pilgrim, Gift, Delayed Response, and Pictures On the Wall.
 
From the A Parrot Sipping Tea liner notes by Michael Robinson:
 
A Parrot Sipping Tea is named for a beautiful story Ravi Shankar relates in My Music My Life about his spiritual guru, Tat Baba, a person Ravi credits with saving his life during a perilous time. Tat Baba was believed by his disciples to have manifested as a parrot in their guru’s home, including the parrot most remarkably accepting no food or drink while sitting in Tat Baba’s chair with the exception of sipping tea as was the guru’s custom, something witnessed by Shankar himself. I’ve long believed My Music My Life to be the finest book about music ever written. When I initially discovered it in my high school library during lunch break there was no inkling I would years later study with legendary teacher Harihar Rao, Shankar’s senior disciple, and the person who had recorded Ravi’s words and thoughts into such momentous written form. Invariably, my compositions are named only after they are completed. Oftentimes this involves searching through various books of poetry and prose for prospective titles. Deciding to peruse My Music My Life for this purpose, the page I opened to by chance was the chapter with the parrot story, instinctively fitting the feeling I had for this newly born music perfectly.


The genesis of my new composition and performance began with curiosity for an unusual form of Just Intonation tuning La Monte Young developed for his Well-Tuned Piano improvisations. I’ve been using more traditional forms of Just Intonation related to Indian raga tunings since 1995, beginning with the Hamoa album, though I have also enjoyed a variety of tunings from various world cultures, always guided by how appealing and effective they sound in particular settings of my own design. There have also been tunings I developed myself. 
When I began investigating The Well-Tuned Piano tuning, I noticed right away the tuning falls within Khammaj thaat, similar to the Western Mixolydian mode. While not knowing if this was his intention or not, Young ingeniously transformed the chromatic scale into Khammaj thaat, including three enharmonic tones for Rishaba (second), three enharmonic tones for Panchama (fifth), and two enharmonic tones for Shadja (tonic). I found this tuning extremely attractive, and decided to use my personal interpretation of the tuning for a new composition, including using A rather than E flat for Shadja, and adjusting the tunings for Gandhara (third), Madhyama (fourth), Dhaivata (sixth), and Komal Nishada (lowered seventh) because these temperings sounded best in the context of the four contrasting movements of A Parrot Sipping Tea.

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TRACKLIST:
1. A Parrot Sipping Tea – Alap
2. A Parrot Sipping Tea – Jor and Jhala
3. A Parrot Sipping Tea – Drut Gat
4. A Parrot Sipping Tea – Ati Drut Gat
5. Pilgrim (from Trembling Flowers)
6. Gift (from Trembling Flowers)
7. Delayed Response (from Trembling Flowers)
8. Pictures On the Wall (from Trembling Flowers)