First of all she's the best looking extra on the Sopranos in real life I've seen to date maybe.

Second of all she rides on the LIRR.

She also comes to the rescue like Wonder Woman if you're lucky enough to be helped by her.

When the train gets stuck and everyone has to wait an hour or so perhaps even in the dark she knows its going to happen in advance and advises you to follow her so as not to be late for meeting the greatest living musician and music teacher in the world since the passing of his father.

Sure enough it happens and while everyone on the train is sweating she is suddenly holding a giant set of keys and knows which one will open the locked train double doors not a master lock picker like its easy to open sesame the double doors of major league trains.

Then the super model-looking lock opener who can't believe you had the nerve to sit across from her when everyone else was intimidated also knows directions to where you're going and places on you a blessing to arrive on time even if wetter from Brooklyn summer humidity than Elvin Jones following myriad fulls set he really all alone performed following the passing of John Coltrane.

Innuendo aside being soaking wet on a summer day in Brooklyn is par for the course but there wasn't enough time to buy an India kurta to show proper respect so that plan was shot.

But finding the building all right and gaining the confidence of the security guard was courage building so I went back out for some caloric replenishment juice or soda and I forget what else to eat maybe a buttered bagel but it was more than enough.

Then finally when I arrived at the back to the past apartment like Grandma's in Flatbush now I was in unknown parts feeling more Calcutta than Flatbush.

The suspense built because the Maestro was showering something called for since there was no air conditioning and it was in the low nineties with humidity off the charts still it was bliss being in the akasha of a music immortal breathing air after leaving Los Angeles California following getting the green light near Aspen Colorado 'Iao Valley did not help at all but there were enough dollars to afford to be there music lessons worth remembering a day to recall bacal but it was three or four or two less than six days in a row I still cannot believe he said yes and would have failed but for the unknown Train Maiden who hypnotized with her problem deconstructions to solutions one must sip less than a seventh of a tea spoon and then there are seven seconds of heaven disaster to gulp down the whole ice cold ancient soma horse sacrifice it somehow turned out perfect even though I had to defend my sandals and knowledge of Indian classical music plus the computer that recorded our lessons was angled off the mark subsequently just recording with a phone to save the hassle.

Ocean Avenue not Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Brooklyn Heights or Carrol Gardens more like Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, Pale Rider or Goddess Crater of the Sun Haleakala, The Sun of Music, The Sound of Music, Pandit Jasraj, Shivkumar Sharma, Here Comes the Sun, George Harrison, the Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Laura Nyro, Onyx Sands, Charukeshi, Nikhil Banerjee, Benny Goodman, Lee Konitz, Rollan Masciarelli, Frank Sinatra, Hamoa, Fire Monkey, Night of Fire, Puriya Dhanashri, Bhimpalasi, Dhani, etc, from Calcutta Farrukhabad Gharana.

FOUND JOY

were eventually yielded from the music lessons a few years later on an unexpected ax the pianoforte being a child of the santoor.

- Michael Eric Robinson Longhi, Brooklyn Heights and Other Parts Memories from Hawaii and Los Angeles, January 2025-January 2026

© 2025-2026 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

Michael Eric Robinson Longhi is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, pianist and musicologist. His over 200 albums include over 150 meruvina albums 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 over 50 albums of piano improvisations both solo and duet with Anindo Chatterjee of India and Eliot Zigmund formerly 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 for his Charlie Parker Quarter/Quintet, 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.