Yoko Miwa & Mikayla Shirley Interview | The Midnight Hour (2026) | Boston Jazz Duo

Welcome to a new edition of the Neon Jazz Interview Series with Boston-based pianist Yoko Miwa and vocalist Mikayla Shirley.

On this episode, we dive into their beautiful new 2026 debut album, The Midnight Hour—a recording born from late-night performances, intimate musical chemistry, and a shared love for great songs.

Last year, Yoko and Mikayla began performing together during The Mad Monkfish's Midnight Sessions in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What started as intimate duo performances gradually developed into a remarkable musical collaboration, creating what has become one of the Boston jazz scene's hidden treasures.

Their debut recording captures the atmosphere and spirit of those late-night sessions, showcasing two musicians who move effortlessly across musical boundaries.

The repertoire travels from jazz standards and Broadway songs to Brazilian music, classic pop, and contemporary songwriting. But rather than being defined by genre, the project is united by something much simpler—and much more powerful:

A great song.

Yoko Miwa and Mikayla Shirley bring their individual voices together in a setting that leaves plenty of room for intimacy, spontaneity, conversation, and musical discovery.

The Midnight Hour is a celebration of songs, atmosphere, musical chemistry, and the magic that can happen when two artists simply sit down together and listen to each other.

This is a wonderful conversation about the art of the duo, the Boston jazz community, and why sometimes the most powerful music happens long after the sun goes down.

Yoko Miwa & Mikayla Shirley — The Midnight Hour
https://store.spinneymedia.com/products/yoko-miwa-mikayla-shirley-the-midnight-hour-cd 

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Danura Miriyagalla Interview | The Navigator's Pivot | Navigating Change, Purpose & Leadership

Welcome to a new edition of the Famous Interviews with Joe Dimino series. On this episode, we talk with Danura Miriyagalla, Author and International Development & Management Specialist whose remarkable career has taken him across Asia, Africa, Australia, the Pacific, and the United States.

His work sits at the intersection of research, creative practice, cross-cultural leadership, global experience, and personal transformation.

Those years of moving between countries, cultures, careers, and communities profoundly shaped the way Danura thinks about belonging, direction, identity, and change.

His book, The Navigator's Pivot, is a reflective guide for anyone navigating a major work-life transition.

Drawing on ancient seafaring wisdom, philosophy, lived global experience, and modern leadership practice, Danura explores how we can move through periods of uncertainty with greater clarity, calm, awareness, and purpose.

At the heart of the book is a powerful idea: every transition involves two movements—the Pivot and the Inflection.

The Pivot is about changing direction.

The Inflection is about understanding how that change reshapes the journey.

Together, they offer a different way of thinking about career transitions, personal reinvention, leadership, uncertainty, and the moments when the path ahead suddenly looks very different.

Danura's philosophy isn't about escaping life's storms.

It's about learning how to steer through them with grace—and discovering that somewhere within us, the compass may already be pointing home.

More Danura Miriyagalla & The Navigator's Pivot
Get *The Navigator's Pivot*
Danura Miriyagalla on LinkedIn

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Janette Burke Interview | Women's Leadership, Caregiving, Reinvention & Finding Your Voice

Welcome to a new edition of the Famous Interviews with Joe Dimino series. On this episode, we talk with Janette Burke, Women's Leadership Speaker, Media Personality, and TV Podcast Host who has reached an incredible 15.2 million women across 15 seasons of her own television podcast.

But behind the success is a deeply personal story about caregiving, capacity, identity, resilience, leadership, and reinvention.

When Janette's mother's health changed, everything changed.

She found herself rebuilding her entire business around a 20-hour maximum work week while quietly carrying the responsibilities and emotional weight of caregiving. She didn't walk away from her career or give up on her ambitions—but she had to become brutally honest about what she could actually carry.

That experience transformed the way she thinks about success.

Janette now speaks directly to women—particularly women over 40—who are holding families, careers, relationships, and other people together while simultaneously trying to figure out who they are becoming themselves. 

Her message is about recognizing limits without surrendering ambition, embracing change without losing identity, and finding the courage to tell the truth about what life actually requires.

From her base in Toronto, Janette shares a story filled with truth, grit, vulnerability, resilience, and hope.

More Janette Burke:
Janette Burke Official Website

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Amber Weekes Interview | To Oscar with Love (2026) | Celebrating Oscar Brown Jr.

Welcome to a new edition of the Neon Jazz Interview Series with acclaimed Los Angeles-based jazz singer Amber Weekes.

On this episode, we reconnect with Amber to explore her powerful new 2026 album, To Oscar with Love—a deeply personal tribute to the late, great Oscar Brown Jr., the legendary singer-songwriter, poet, storyteller, and Civil Rights activist.

For Amber, this project is much more than a tribute album. It represents the fulfillment of a musical destiny that began when she was a young girl and first heard Oscar Brown Jr.'s iconic song “The Snake” playing on the car radio during a family trip.

That moment sparked her imagination.

Oscar's music, personality, storytelling, wit, and unique ability to illuminate the lived experience of Black Americans stayed with Amber throughout her life. Nearly five decades later, she has turned that lifelong fascination into To Oscar with Love—a collection of Oscar Brown Jr.'s songs that demonstrates just how relevant his music and message remain today.

The album also arrives as part of the celebration surrounding Oscar Brown Jr.'s centennial, with October 10, 2026 marking what would have been his 100th birthday.

Amber and Joe also reconnect after previously speaking before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, making this a particularly meaningful return to the Neon Jazz program. 

This is a conversation about jazz, history, storytelling, Black American culture, musical legacy, social consciousness, and the remarkable power of one artist's work to inspire another generation decades later. 

Amber Weekes brings her own voice and perspective to Oscar Brown Jr.'s remarkable catalog, creating a tribute that is both deeply respectful and completely alive in the present.

Amber Weekes — To Oscar with Love
https://amberweekes.com/to-oscar-with-love/

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Bruce Babashan Interview | Leadership Reliability, Meet The Moment™ & High-Performance Teams

Welcome to a new edition of the Famous Interviews with Joe Dimino series. On this episode, we talk with Bruce Babashan, Keynote Speaker, Leadership Reliability Expert, and seasoned coach—and the creator of Meet The Moment™.

Bruce challenges a common assumption about leadership: that organizations succeed simply by developing exceptional leaders.

His philosophy takes the conversation one step further.

While leadership development is essential, Bruce argues that truly high-performing organizations also need to prepare for a fundamental reality: every leader is human.

Leaders face pressure, uncertainty, mistakes, adversity, unexpected challenges, and moments when preparation meets reality. Bruce's work focuses on helping organizations and individuals become more reliable when those moments arrive.

His career has given him an extraordinary perspective on leadership and performance. He served as a Practice President with one of the nation's largest retained executive search firms, advising and assessing senior leaders for major organizations including Paramount Studios, Jersey Films, and Wynn Resorts.

But Bruce's experience doesn't stop in the corporate world.

For more than three decades, he has also coached elite fighters, working with world champions, Olympians, and national teams. He spent years coaching high school football in one of Maryland's most successful programs as well.

That combination—executive leadership, elite athletics, coaching, performance, pressure, and human behavior—provides the foundation for his unique approach to leadership reliability.

This is a fascinating conversation about leadership, reliability, pressure, coaching, human performance, organizational culture, and what it really takes to perform when the moment arrives.

Bruce brings together lessons from the boardroom, the football field, and elite combat sports to make a compelling case for preparing people not just to lead—but to meet the moment when leadership is truly tested.

Official Website:
https://brucebabashan.com/

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NicoleYvette Interview | Say Yes (2026) | Jazz, Gospel Roots, Prince & Finding Her Voice

Welcome to a new edition of the Neon Jazz Interview Series with acclaimed jazz vocalist and composer NicoleYvette.

On this episode, we dive into her powerful 2026 debut recording, Say Yes, and the remarkable life in music that led her to this moment.

Say Yes is a deeply personal and fully realized jazz statement—one that explores identity, faith, resilience, transformation, self-discovery, and the journey from the dark night of the soul to the dawn of the self.

NicoleYvette's debut features an extraordinary collection of artists, including Kurt Elling, Terri Lyne Carrington, Joel Ross, J. Ivy, Keyon Harrold, and Paul Cornish. The album was produced by three-time GRAMMY® Award winner Sara Gazarek, bringing together an exceptional group of musicians around NicoleYvette's distinctive artistic vision.

But Say Yes isn't simply about the impressive names surrounding the recording. At its heart is NicoleYvette's story—her gospel roots, her relationship with music, her love of Prince, and the experiences that shaped her voice as both a vocalist and composer.

The album feels like a lifetime of departures and arrivals, capturing the emotional process of leaving one version of yourself behind and stepping fully into another.

This is a conversation about jazz, soul, gospel, faith, Prince, personal transformation, and the courage it takes to finally say yes to yourself.

NicoleYvette's debut is more than an introduction—it is a declaration.

NicoleYvette Official Website:
https://nicoleyvettemusic.com/ 

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Luiza Girardello Interview | Brazilian Jazz, Cancer Survival, Immigration & Finding Her Voice

Welcome to a new edition of the Neon Jazz Interview Series with award-winning Brooklyn-based singer and songwriter Luiza Girardello.

In this deeply personal conversation, we catch up with a young and rising artist whose music is shaped by a life lived between worlds. Born in Brazil, educated at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and now based in New York City, Luiza has spent much of her life navigating questions of identity, belonging, culture, and artistic expression.

Those experiences have become central to her music.

Luiza's sound draws from Brazilian rhythms, jazz, alternative rock, and contemporary songwriting, creating a musical identity that refuses to fit neatly into a single genre.

Her journey has also included an extraordinary personal challenge. Before earning international recognition by winning the Jazz/Blues category at the New England Songwriting Competition, Luiza survived an aggressive form of ovarian cancer that temporarily affected her coordination and voice and forced her to relearn how to sing.

Now in remission, she has transformed those experiences into music that reflects the perspective of a Brazilian immigrant, cancer survivor, educator, songwriter, and artist.

This is a conversation about music, identity, immigration, resilience, survival, creativity, and finding your voice after life forces you to begin again.

Luiza Girardello is an artist with a fascinating story—and her music reflects the complexity of a life lived across cultures, genres, and experiences.

Official Website:
https://www.luizagirardello.com/

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