When I first learned how Bill Evans refused to divulge his pianistic secrets to another player because he feared this would deprive that person of the enormously pleasurable and perilous experience of developing a personal approach, I thought it was an excuse, and Bill was being miserly.

Now, that impression has changed drastically.

All it really takes is to actually spend consistent time playing the piano, together with nurturing one's musical spirit and knowledge through listening to music with creative substance serving as an example, to see that Evans was not joking.

Most recently, reflecting on the Distanced album, the influence of Lennie Tristano, the teacher of my primary jazz teacher, Lee Konitz, has arisen. 

Jocelyn is the person who first asked me to play standards for her and her daughter Francine Robbins once a week after Jocelyn requested it, a custom that began my pianistic explorations, including her most kind encouragement.

I only played standards for her, this being her favorite music. Sometimes she sang along and often tapped along too.

Jocelyn would have turned 100 this coming year, coincidently born on March 11 like myself.

She is entirely responsible for bringing this musical realm into my life together with Barney Bragin while the advise of Bill Evans has provided a compass fashioned from a wood symphony by the father of an Armenian woman whose name is not with me at the time nor is his but will be sooner or later.

- Michael Eric Robinson Longhi, February 2025, Kula Maui Hawaii

© 2025 by Michael Robinson All rights reserved

Michael Eric Robinson Longhi is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, pianist and musicologist who used to live in the same California county as Jimmy Byle. His 200 albums include 153 albums for meruvina featured on National Public Rado, Pacifica Radio and University, College and Public radio stations across America in addition to the rest of the world.

There are also currently 47 albums of piano improvisations both solo and duet with Guruji Anindo Chatterjee of India and Eliot Zigmund of the Bill Evans Trio both among the greatest percussionists in recorded history.

Michael's primary jazz teacher was alto saxophonist Lee Konitz of the Lennie Tristano Quartet who would fill in for Charlie Parker when he was indisposed joined by Bud Powell, Charlie Mingus and Max Roach, lead soloist with the Stan Kenton Orchestra that included Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Levey and Bird, led a quartet featuring Billy Bauer, Don Bagley, Arnold Fishkin, Miles Davis and Roach, performed at the first Newport Jazz Festival with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Dave Brubeck with Paul Desmond and Joe Morello before becoming strictly a solo artist with various accompanying musicians like Hal Galper, Chick Corea, Red Mitchell, Joe Henderson, Elvin Jones, Jack DeJohnette, Peggy Stern, Blue Mitchell, Bill Evan, Alan Dawson, Phil Woods, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, also Hank Freeman of the original Artie Shaw Orchestra who recorded Begin the Beguine and Dinah Washington would later never record without him playing lead alto, Charlie Colin, Rollan Masciarelli from Columbia University in NYC, Ray Shiner of the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra who earlier did the arrangements for Benny Goodman (he being Lee and Bird's primary jazz Guru together with Lester Young, Lennie, Artie and Louis Armstrong) and New York Philharmonic, Reggie Johnson featured on Archie Shep's greatest album, Makambo Ken McIntyre who founded the first jazz program in the USA and Paul Jeffrey of the Thelonious Monk Quartet.

His primary Western Classical Music composition teachers were Adele Berk, Don Funes, John Cage and Steve Reich, also Morton Feldman, Leonard Bernstein, Gunther Schuller, John Chowning, La Monte Young, Robert Washburn, Eliot Del Borgo, James Ball, Arthur Frackenpohl and Perry Yaw.

Longhi's primary North Indian Classical Music teachers were Harihar Rao of UCLA, the senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar who invited Michael to study with him too, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma who reinvented the ancient folk music instrument Voice of A Hundred Colours the Indian santoor which is a powerfully influential precursor of our Western keyboard instruments including the piano anticipating Robinson's Meruvina realization and conecption, Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy of the Oriental Music School in London, England who was born in a Palace on the Indian Ocean in Bombay a Hindu family that converted to Islam working in forest trees, Pandit Jasraj The Sun of Music in India, Popat Savla, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Pandit Ram Narayan and N. Rajam from recordings, Kala Ramnath, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri and his current Guruji is Pandit Anindo Chatterjee.

His over 400 essays mostly about music have been used by Carnegie Hall, New York University, the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles and New York University.

Michael has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College and California State University Long Beach and Dominguez Hills, the Pasadena California Libraries and Wantagh High School in Nassau County on the South Shore of Long Island in the State of New York.

Robinson has performed in the New York City Libraries, the Beverly Hills California Library, La Mama La Galleria and the Knitting Factory in Manhattan, Hunter College of New York City University and myriad churches in Manhattan New York City, Los Angeles County including the first Film Festival of India and Maui Hawaii to name a few.

Michael was born in French Hospital in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan later named Chelsea where The Godfather was later filmed and has lived in Borough Park Brooklyn, North Merrick in Nassau County Long Island, Wantagh named for a Chief of the Montauk Native Americans, the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Beverly Hills and Los Angeles California and Kapalua and Kula Maui Hawaii the Aloha State.

The above bio is a brief ongoing summation due to limitations of time and Akasha and have everything to do with Johnny Winter an albino from Texas being the greatest rock guitarist in recorded history the electric guitar being the essence of rock, the piano the essence of past Western classical music, the saxophone being the essence of jazz and the Meruvina being the essence of computer music the current chief manisfestaion of Western Classical Music.

Michael will soon be adding alto and tenor saxophone recordings to his oeuvre together with the gatra vina.