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Programs and Presentations

• STAR IN THE EAST
An Interactive Mandala Christmas Program

The story of Christmas is illuminated with participatory Scripture lessons, responsive readings, chant, and the evocative music of Mandala. Suitable either as a service of worship or an educational enrichment program, Star in the East includes music for listening and for singing along, and offers participants a whole new approach to the celebration of the Holy Birth.

• WHAT’S SPIRITUAL ABOUT MUSIC, ANYWAY?

Why do people so often describe music as spiritual, and what are they responding to when they do so? With forays into such diverse areas as infant neuroscience, dance class, the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Warner Brothers cartoons, Scott Robinson and Mandala explore the spirituality of musical sound.

• TO GO AMONG THE SARACENS:
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, ISLAM, AND MUSIC

W as Francis of Assisi’s first Rule for his order rejected because, at a time when the Vatican was trying to raise money and support for the Fifth Crusade, Francis urged brothers who wish to go among the Saracens not to argue or dispute with them, but to be subject to every living creature for God’s sake? Did Francis bring back Islamic devotional practices from the Middle East and Christianize them?

Scott Robinson, a Third Order Franciscan, shows how Francis was centuries ahead of his time in the area of interfaith relations. Mandala enlivens the presentation with Scott’s original Sufi-inspired Christian music.

• THE UNKNOWN GOD:
THE TABLA AND THE PROLOGUE TO THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN

In this program, which Dr. Robinson performs solo with recorded accompaniment, the tabla serve as a metaphor for the incarnational theology of the Prologue to the Gospel of John.

Dr. Robinson shows how the "bols", or spoken syllables which correspond to the tabla drumstrokes, can represent the transcendent Word, while the same drumstrokes played on the tabla can represent the Word in physical form--"the Word made flesh." Then, beginning with Paul's speech on Mars Hill in Acts 17, in which Paul speaks of the Athenian shrine "to an Unknown God," Dr. Robinson shows how all faiths and cultures can direct us toward the one "God who made heaven and earth."

This program is sermon-length and suitable for inclusion in a service of worship

A member of the Third Order of St. Francis, a religious order within the Episcopal Church, Scott Robinson teaches music at Eastern University. For more information or bookings, contact:
Scott Robinson
215-753-9419
scottrobinson@earthlink.net