mick laBriola

Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After only a few million years for the most massive stars, the enriched material is blasted back into interstellar space where star formation can begin anew. The expanding debris cloud known as Cassiopeia A is an example of this final phase of the stellar life cycle. Light from the supernova explosion that created this remnant would have been first seen in planet Earth’s sky about 350 years ago, although it took that light 11,000 years to reach us. This sharp NIRCam image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the still hot filaments and knots in the supernova remnant. The whitish, smoke-like outer shell of the expanding blast wave is about 20 light-years across. A series of light echoes from the massive star’s cataclysmic explosion are alsoidentified in Webb’s detailed images of the surrounding interstellar medium.

Sidney “Big Sid” Catlett (January 17, 1910 – March 25, 1951 Evansville, IN) was an American jazzdrummer. Catlett was one of the most versatile drummers of his era, adapting with the changing music scene as bebop emerged.

After performing for several lesser established musical acts, Catlett began recording and performing with multiple musicians including Benny Carter, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Fletcher Henderson, and Don Redman throughout the 1930s. Between 1938 and 1942, Catlett was Louis Armstrong‘s drummer of choice as he was regularly featured in Armstrong’s big band, while also periodically joining Benny Goodman‘s group. Following a brief stint in collaboration with Duke Ellington in 1945, Catlett led some of his own bands through the remainder of the 1940s, and was involved in Armstrong’s All-Stars between 1947 and 1949.

Catlett was one of the few drummers to successively transition into bebop, appearing on Dizzy Gillespie‘s progressive recordings in 1945. Catlett participated in the Gillespie-Charlie Parker segment of a New Jazz Foundation June 1945 concert at New York’s Town Hall; a recording surfaced in 2005. In 1950, he performed with Hoagy Carmichael at the Copley Plaza Hotel. In early 1951, he began to suffer from pneumonia. In that same year, he died of a heart attack while visiting friends backstage at a Hot Lips Pagebenefit concert in Chicago, Illinois.

(January 17, 1910 – March 25, 1951) was an American jazzdrummer. Catlett was one of the most versatile drummers of his era, adapting with the changing music scene as bebop emerged.

In early 1951, he began to suffer from pneumonia. In that same year, he died of a heart attack while visiting friends backstage at a Hot Lips Pagebenefit concert in Chicago, Illinois.

Cedar Anthony Walton Jr. (January 17, 1934 – August 19, 2013 Dallas, TX) was an American hard bop jazz pianist. He came to prominence as a member of drummer Art Blakey‘s band, The Jazz Messengers, before establishing a long career as a bandleader and composer. Several of his compositions have become jazz standards, including “Mosaic”, “Bolivia“, “Holy Land”, “Mode for Joe” and “Ugetsu/Fantasy in D”.

Walton was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Germany, cutting short his rising status in the after-hours jazz scene. In the Army he played with musicians Leo Wright, Don Ellis and Eddie Harris. On his discharge after two years, he picked up where he left off, playing as a sideman with Kenny Dorham, on whose 1958 album This Is the Moment!, he made his recording debut. He joined the Jazztet led by Benny Golson and Art Farmer and played with them from 1958 to 1961. In April 1959 he recorded an alternate take of “Giant Steps” with John Coltrane, though he did not solo. In the early 1960s Walton joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers as a pianist-arranger (on the same day Freddie Hubbard joined the group), where, for the next three years, he wrote and arranged such originals as “Ugetsu” and “Mosaic”.^{[citation needed]}

He left the Messengers in 1964 and by the late 1960s was part of the house rhythm section at Prestige Records. In addition to releasing his own recordings there, he recorded with Sonny Criss, Pat Martino, Eric Kloss, and Charles McPherson. For a year, he was Abbey Lincoln‘s accompanist, and recorded with Lee Morgan from 1966 to 1968. In the mid-1970s he led the funk group Mobius. He arranged and recorded for Etta James from the mid-1990s on, helping her win a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album for Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday (RCA Victor) in 1994.

Entrada – Entrance, often performed to a guitar falseta or to the singer’s entrance (salida) ti ri ti tran, tran…

Llamada – The dancer’s call starting on count 1, indicating that a new section is about to begin. This can be a long sequence of footwork or just one or two sets of compás (12 or 24 counts). This is also the cue for the singer’s entrance.

Letra – The dancer’s call starting on count 1, indicating that a new section is about to begin. This can be a long sequence of footwork or just one or two sets of compás (12 or 24 counts). This is also the cue for the singer’s entrance.

First Escobilla – The first extended footwork section. The dancer displays virtuosic footwork here while the guitar plays a standardized arpeggio pattern. The singer doesn’t usually sing during an escobilla. This builds to a subída, two or more sets of compás in which the dancer builds to a climax. 

​Silencio – This is a traditional 6-12 compás falseta performed by the guitarist. The music is slow and in the parallel minor key. The dancer interprets the music, usually in a lyrical rather than percussive manner. The final compás moves back to the major key and the original tempo, leading to the castellana.

Castellana – This is a combination footwork/remate section that leads away from the silencio into an escobilla. Usually 4 compás long, the singer sings the traditional ‘tiriti tran tran tran” or a shortened verse. This generally ends with one or more sets of compás for the remate. This section is not always performed, but is often included in a completely traditional version of the dance.

​Seco – This footwork section is often performed a palo seco, where the guitar acts as a rhythm instrument as the guitarist strums muted strings, and palmistas perform strong palmas. The dancer can establish the tempo with palmas and traveling steps for two or more compás, and will continue on to perform many intricate footwork variations.

​Third Escobilla – The guitar returns with traditional escobilla music while the dancer performs more intricate footwork variations.

​Cambio – The traditional escobilla starts on count 1 of the compás while the Bulerías de Ca’i, the closing section, starts on beat 12. In the cambio section, the guitarist and dancer move the accent structure to beat 12 to segue into the bulerías.

​Buleria de C’ai – Bulerías de Ca’i is performed as a finale/remate for the entire dance. The singer sings the traditional bulerías de Ca’i in a major key. This section transitions into the salida/cierre with a desplante llamada – a standardized 12 to 24 count pattern that is the bridge/cue into Bulerías e Ca’i. 

Salida – The dancer dances off stage to traditional closing music. The dancer can also end on stage, but will usually perform a long traveling pattern leading to the closing cierre.

Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies a some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, The Southern Pinwheel. Still, reddish star forming regions that dot this cosmic pinwheel’s spiral arms have suggested another nickname, the Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. A mere 40,000 light-years across, smaller than the Milky Way, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy Centaurus A. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright at x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp color image also features spiky foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies. The image data was captured with the Dark Energy Camera and Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.

Helen Folasade Adu CBE (Yoruba: Fọláṣadé Adú ; born 16 January 1959), known professionally as Sade Adu or simply Sade  is a Nigerian-British singer, known as the lead vocalist of her band Sade. One of the most successful British female artists in history, she is often recognised as an influence on contemporary music Her success in the music industry was recognised with the honour Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2002, and she was made Commander in the 2017 Birthday Honours.

Sade was born in Ibadan, British Nigeria, and was brought up in England from the age of four. She studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London and gained modest recognition as a fashion designer and part-time model before joining the band Pride in the early 1980s. After gaining attention as a performer, she formed the band Sade, and secured a recording contract with Epic Records in 1983.

A year later, the band released the album Diamond Life, which became one of the era’s best-selling albums and the best-selling debut by a British female vocalist. In July 1985, Sade was among the performers at the Live Aid charity concert at Wembley Stadium, and the next year, she appeared in the film Absolute Beginners. The band released their third album (Stronger Than Pride) in 1988, and a fourth album (Love Deluxe) in 1992. The band went on hiatus in 1996 after the birth of Sade’s child.

After eight years the band reunited in 1999 and released Lovers Rock in 2000. The album departed from the jazz-inspired inflections of their previous work, featuring mellower sounds. Ten years later the band released of Soldier of Love, their sixth studio album, and toured arenas worldwide.

Since the 2011 tour finished, they have released two songs, “Flower of the Universe” for the soundtrack of Disney‘s A Wrinkle in Time, and “The Big Unknown“, part of the soundtrack of Steve McQueen‘s film Widows.