She used music to help break the cycle of violence. A newly dedicated studio ensures her mission continues.

Kasim Brisbon’s face was illuminated by the pink neon sign on the wall that bore his mother’s name.

Family and friends — and friends who had become family — traveled near and far just weeks before Christmas to squeeze into a first-floor room inside the Community Education Center in West Philadelphia.

It was a bittersweet moment, but one in which Brisbon, 23, could not help but rejoice.

“She would have loved this,” he said.

This is the newly dedicated Khalia Robinson Studio — which bears a sign as radiant as the woman he and others were there to honor.

Robinson, 44, was a founding board member of Beyond the Bars, a community and career-planning nonprofit that uses music to help young people escape cycles of violence and incarceration.

In May, the brutality Robinson hoped to protect others from cut her life short when she was caught in the cross fire of a shooting in North Philly. Police have so far arrested one man in connection with the Memorial Day weekend killing that left Brisbon and his two siblings, Trinidad Robinson, 16, and Danielle Wood, 13, without their mother.

When I called Matthew Kerr, one of the cofounders of Beyond the Bars, to talk about Robinson, something about the stories he told about her felt familiar. Only later did I realize why. In 2018, I spoke to Robinson about her role in helping a student she was working with through another city nonprofit, Mighty Writers, get a full scholarship to Harvard University. Her dedication to him and other young people left an impression.

Kerr wasn’t surprised. Robinson’s impact ran deep, especially in West Philadelphia, where she grew up and where she hoped to one day start her own music nonprofit.

Robinson’s mother, Katherine Croom, recalled that even as a young girl there was rarely an instrument her daughter couldn’t pick up and play. When Robinson wasn’t making music, she was dreaming of helping others make it.

“She was always trying to help people,” Croom said. “She was always that way. She wanted to make things better.”

Kerr and cofounder Christopher Thornton said Robinson brought that spirit to Beyond the Bars a year after they founded the organization in 2015. On paper, they said, Robinson was a board member, but that didn’t fully capture how she supported and coached two young men to run a healthy community-based and student-driven organization.

“When we first started Beyond the Bars, we didn’t know what we were doing,” Kerr told those gathered for the dedication ceremony. “Khalia came in and said, ‘Here’s all the different ways that we can be impacting change, all the different ways that we can be working to get music to young people.’ Today we have 45 music labs. None of that would have existed without Khalia’s vision.”

Thornton said both he and Kerr were “honored by the care and love” Robinson shared with Beyond the Bars. But they were also endlessly impressed with the work she did in the community.

“It felt important to honor her legacy and share love with her and her family and everyone who knew her and was touched by her work and her presence,” Thornton said.

Among those were best friends Huriya Edens and Netta Sayles, who came from Connecticut for the event. They laughed when they thought of what Robinson, who was more like a sister, might have said if she were there to see the studio: “Oh, you shouldn’t have ...”

“She was always so humble,” Edens said.

The three would often talk about growing older together, Sayles said.

But now only two are left behind.

“We talk about her all the time,” Sayles said.

As celebratory as the night was, it was clear that those who knew and loved Robinson were still reeling from her death, and might be for a long time.

As her brother, Dwayne Croom, took in the gathering, he said it has eased his family’s pain a little to know that Robinson was so appreciated. That she will be remembered.

“It’s like a knife to the heart,” he said. “Our family has never experienced a loss like this. This … this makes you stop in your tracks and wonder: How do we handle this? How do we move forward?”

There are no easy answers, of course. No one path to healing.

But those who knew and loved Khalia Robinson are certain of one thing: Any road to healing will be full of music, just as she would have wanted.