The Emmy Award-winning Los Angeles pianist and composer turns personal hardship and global uncertainty into an uplifting neo-classical piece, accompanied by a surreal music video directed by longtime collaborator Klaus Hoch.
For Peter Manning Robinson, “Bent Out of Shape” began with a need rather than a concept. After months marked by personal struggle and the emotional weight of events happening around the world, the Los Angeles-based pianist and composer found himself searching for something lighter. Instead of ignoring what he was feeling, Robinson returned to the place where he has spent much of his life processing experience: the piano. The result is a lively, whimsical instrumental piece that does not deny difficulty but deliberately reaches toward joy.
“I created the music for ‘Bent Out Of Shape’ after many months of struggle, both in my personal life, but as a reaction to world events,” Robinson explains. “I needed an uplifting experience…some positivity. This is the beauty of music…we express our emotions and work out our issues through our art.”
That emotional transformation gives “Bent Out of Shape” more depth than its playful character may initially suggest. The composition is bright and energetic, filled with whimsical notes and an unmistakable sense of movement, but the happiness is earned. It emerges from someone consciously choosing to create beauty while navigating circumstances that had left him feeling emotionally worn down. Rather than writing directly about struggle through lyrics, Robinson lets the piano tell the story through changes in rhythm, melody, tension, and release.
The accompanying music video, directed by Klaus Hoch, extends that idea through a visually surreal story about reconciliation. Set inside a picturesque mansion overlooking the sea, the video follows a relationship through fragments of shared history, using an almost dreamlike journey to explore what it means for two people to revisit their past and find a path toward one another again. Hoch’s imagery complements the music without attempting to explain every note, giving viewers room to develop their own emotional interpretation.
That openness has long been central to Robinson’s work. Born in Chicago and raised between Vancouver and Los Angeles, he began playing piano at only three years old and was performing professionally by twelve. His musical foundation combines classical structure with jazz improvisation, strengthened through studies at USC and Berklee College of Music and performances with respected jazz musicians including Ernie Watts, Phil Woods, and Freddie Hubbard.
His career eventually expanded across film, television, orchestral composition, and live performance. Robinson earned an Emmy Award for his work on KABC’s Above and Below and five BMI Music Awards connected to Without a Trace. His orchestral compositions have also been recorded by musicians associated with the London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Musica Nova.
Behind those accomplishments is a period that dramatically changed the way Robinson approached his instrument. In his early twenties, severe tendonitis threatened his ability to continue performing, and he was told that playing live might no longer be possible. Rather than abandoning the piano, he underwent an extensive physical and artistic retraining process with Phil Cohen through Concordia University’s Leonardo Project. Robinson describes the process as “unlearning” traditional piano technique and developing an entirely new physical and musical language.
That journey ultimately contributed to one of his most distinctive innovations: the Refractor Piano™, a radically reimagined acoustic piano designed for what Robinson calls “Refracted Music.” His performances use no prerecorded tracks, MIDI instruments, or external sounds, allowing him to create complex sonic environments entirely through an acoustic instrument. The Refractor Piano™ debuted in 2016 at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, followed by performances at spaces including the Vortex Dome and Museum of Modern Art DTLA.
Yet “Bent Out of Shape” belongs to another side of Robinson’s artistry. The single is part of his upcoming neo-classical album Excursions, which represents a return to solo acoustic piano after years of experimentation with the Refractor Piano™. Developed across approximately three years, the album examines grief, heartbreak, resilience, renewal, and eventually hope.
Robinson describes the compositions as an emotional outlet created during a period of personal loss and global upheaval. He repeatedly found himself returning to acoustic piano to process sadness, gradually realizing that the individual pieces belonged together. Working alongside Hoch, Robinson selected and refined material from hundreds of recorded sketches until a larger musical and visual journey emerged.
The album’s title reflects that structure. Each “excursion” becomes a temporary journey into a particular emotional state. Earlier single “Pure Heartbreak” occupies one of its darker spaces, examining the pain and instability of a breakup through melancholic piano. Its cinematic video, also directed by Hoch, follows two lovers separating against the California desert.
“Bent Out of Shape” provides a different emotional destination. Instead of remaining inside heartbreak, it allows movement toward renewal and joy. Together, the pieces reveal an album interested not in one fixed emotion but in the way people travel between them.
Robinson has spent decades proving that instrumental music does not require words to tell a deeply human story. With “Bent Out of Shape,” that story is ultimately one of choosing light after an extended period of difficulty. The whimsical piano, emotional history behind the composition, and Hoch’s surreal visual world transform positivity from something superficial into something consciously pursued.
For Robinson, Excursions represents an especially personal body of work. “This is the work I am most proud of,” he says. And with “Bent Out of Shape,” listeners get to hear one of its most hopeful destinations: the moment when struggle has not disappeared, but joy becomes possible again.
https://www.instagram.com/petermanningrobinson/?hl=en
