The Three Portraits of Krishna were composed in 1986 at a time when D’Angelo was renewing himself as a composer through the study of classical Indian music. In the late 1980’s he wrote (and improvised at the piano) several pieces of music in which the entire fabric of a movement was based solely on a given North Indian scale of tones that form the basis of what is called ‘raga’. The Hindu deity Krishna, himself a powerful incarnation of the deity Vishnu, has long been associated not only with the playing of the flute but also the arts in general, most especially the dance. As legend has it, this fiery and divine Hindu hero, who inspires human aspirations, also had a masculine prowess that attracted as many as 16,000 women to him, charmed by his flute playing.