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Björk Guðmundsdóttir born 21 November 1965) is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, record producer, and actress. Noted for her distinct voice, three-octave vocal range, bold musical choices, and sometimes eccentric public persona, she has developed an eclectic musical style over a career spanning four-decades, drawing on electronic, folk, pop, experimental, trip hop, classical, and avant-garde music.
Born and raised in Reykjavík, Björk began her music career at the age of 11 and gained international recognition as the lead singer of the alternative rock band the Sugarcubes by the age of 21. After the Sugarcubes disbanded in 1992, Björk gained prominence as a solo artist with her albums Debut (1993), Post(1995), and Homogenic (1997), collaborating with artists from a range of disciplines and genres, and exploring a variety of multimedia projects. Her later, post-nineties, albums consist of Vespertine (2001), Medúlla (2004), Volta (2007), Biophilia (2011), Vulnicura (2015), Utopia (2017) and Fossora (2022).
Several of Björk’s albums have reached the top 20 on the US Billboard 200 chart. Thirty-one of her singles have reached the top 40 on pop charts around the world, with 22 top 40 hits in the UK, including the top-10singles “It’s Oh So Quiet“, “Army of Me“, and “Hyperballad” and the top-20 singles “Play Dead“, “Big Time Sensuality“, and “Violently Happy“. Her accolades and awards include the Order of the Falcon, five BRIT Awards, and 16 Grammy nominations. In 2015, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Rolling Stone named her the 64th-greatest singer and the 81st-greatest songwriter of all time in 2023.
Björk starred in the 2000 Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “I’ve Seen It All“. Björk has also been an advocate for environmental causes in Iceland. A retrospective exhibition dedicated to Björk was held at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2015.
more...Alphonse Lee Mouzon (November 21, 1948 – December 25, 2016) was an American musician and vocalist, most prominently known as a jazz fusion drummer. He was also a composer, arranger, producer, and actor. Mouzon gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was the owner of Tenacious Records, a label that primarily released Mouzon’s recordings.
Mouzon, of African, French, and Blackfoot descent, was born on November 21, 1948, in Charleston, South Carolina. He received his first musical training at Bonds-Wilson High School, and moved to New York City upon graduation. He studied drama and music at the City College of New York, as well as medicine at Manhattan Medical School. He continued receiving drum lessons from Bobby Thomas, the drummer for jazzpianist Billy Taylor. He played percussion in the 1968 Broadway show Promises, Promises, and he then worked with pianist McCoy Tyner. He spent a year as a member of the jazz fusion band, Weather Report.After that Mouzon signed as a solo artist to the Blue Note label in 1972. On September 7, 2016, Mouzon was diagnosed with neuroendocrine carcinoma, a rare form of cancer. His son, Jean-Pierre Mouzon, reported his father had died of cardiac arrest at his home in Granada Hills, Los Angeles, California, on December 25, 2016, at the age of 68.
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Carlos Manuel “Charlie” Palmieri (November 21, 1927 – September 12, 1988) was a Puerto Rican bandleader and musical director of salsa music. He was known as the “Giant of the Keyboards”.
Palmieri’s parents migrated to New York from Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1926, and settled down in the South Bronx where Palmieri was born. As a child, Palmieri taught himself to play the piano by ear. He attended the public school system. At age seven, his father enrolled him at The Juilliard School, where he took piano lessons. By the time Palmieri was 14 years old, he and his five-year-old brother, Eddie, participated in many talent contests, often winning prizes. It was at this time that his godfather introduced him to the music of the Latin bands – an experience which inspired him to become a musician. Charlie Palmieri suffered another heart attack upon his arrival at New York where, as the musical director of the Joe Cuba Sextet, he was to arrange a concert. He died later that day at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx.
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This Hubble Picture of the Week features NGC 2814, an irregular galaxy that lies about 85 million light years from Earth. In this image, which was captured using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), the galaxy appears to be quite isolated: visually, it looks a little like a loose stroke of bright paint across a dark background. However, looks can be deceiving. NGC 2814 actually has three close (in astronomical terms) galactic neighbours: a side-on spiral galaxy known as NGC 2820; an irregular galaxy named IC 2458; and a face-on non-barred spiral galaxy called NGC 2805. Collectively, the four galaxies make up a galaxy group known as Holmberg 124. In some literature these galaxies are referred to as a group of ‘late-type galaxies’.
The terminology ‘late-type’ refers to spiral and irregular galaxies, whilst ‘early-type’ refers to elliptical galaxies. This rather confusing terminology has led to a common misconception within the astronomy community. It is still quite widely believed that Edwin Hubble inaccurately thought that elliptical galaxies were the evolutionary precursors to spiral and irregular galaxies, and that that is the reason why ellipticals are classed as ‘early-type’ and spirals and irregulars are classed as ‘late-type’. This misconception is due to the Hubble ‘tuning fork’ of galactic classification, which visually shows galaxy types proceeding from elliptical to spiral, in a sequence that could easily be interpreted as a temporal evolution. However, Hubble actually adopted the terms ‘early-type’ and ‘late-type’ from much older astronomical terminology for stellar classifications, and did not mean to state that ellipticals were literally evolutionary precursors to spiral and irregular galaxies. In fact, he explicitly said in his 1927 paper that ‘the nomenclature … [early and late] … refers to position in the sequence, and temporal connotations are made at one’s peril’.
Despite Hubble himself being quite emphatic on this topic, the misunderstanding persists almost a hundred years later, and perhaps provides an instructive example of why it is helpful to classify things with easy-to-interpret terminology from the get-go!
Howard Duane Allman (November 20, 1946 – October 29, 1971) was an American rock and blues guitarist and the founder and original leader of the Allman Brothers Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.
Born in Nashville, Tennessee , Allman began playing the guitar at age 14. He formed the Allman Brothers Band with his brother Gregg in Jacksonville, Florida in 1969. The group achieved its greatest success in the early 1970s. Allman is best remembered for his brief but influential tenure in the band and in particular for his expressive slide guitar playing and inventive improvisational skills. A sought-after session musician both before and during his tenure with the band, Duane Allman performed with such established stars as King Curtis, Aretha Franklin, Herbie Mann, Wilson Pickett, and Boz Scaggs. He also contributed greatly to the 1970 album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, by Derek and the Dominos.
Allman died following a motorcycle crash on October 29, 1971, at the age of 24.
In 2003, he was ranked number 2 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, second only to Jimi Hendrix. In 2011, he was ranked number 9 and in 2023 he was ranked 10th. His guitar tone (achieved with a Gibson Les Paul and two 50-watt bass Marshall amplifiers) was named one of the greatest of all time by Guitar Player.
more...Malcolm John Rebennack Jr. (November 20, 1941 – June 6, 2019), better known by his stage name Dr. John, was an American singer and songwriter. His music combined New Orleans blues, jazz, funk, and R&B.
Active as a session musician from the late 1950s until his death, he gained a following in the late 1960s after the release of his album Gris-Gris (1968) and his appearance at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. He typically performed a lively, theatrical stage show inspired by medicine shows, Mardi Gras costumes, and voodoo ceremonies. Rebennack recorded thirty studio albums and nine live albums, as well as contributing to thousands of other musicians’ recordings. In 1973, he achieved a top-10 hit single with “Right Place, Wrong Time“.
more...Clifton “Skeeter” Best (November 20, 1914 – May 27, 1985) was an American jazz guitarist.
Best played in Philadelphia from 1935 to 1940, recording with Slim Marshall and Erskine Hawkins. In 1940, he joined Earl Hines‘s orchestra, playing with him until he joined the U.S. Navy in 1942. After the war, he played with Bill Johnson from 1945 to 1949. He toured East Asia with Oscar Pettiford in 1951 and 1952, and formed his own trio in the 1950s. He did a critically acclaimed session with Ray Charles and Milt Jacksonin 1957 called Soul Brothers.
In 1958, he recorded with Mercer Ellington and taught in New York City. He also recorded with Harry Belafonte, Etta Jones, Nellie Lutcher, Milt Hinton, Osie Johnson, Paul Quinichette, Jimmy Rushing, Sonny Stitt, Charles Thompson, and Lucky Thompson.
more...It’s the International Space Station (ISS) caught passing in front of the Sun. Sunspots, individually, have a dark central umbra, a lighter surrounding penumbra, and no Dragon capsules attached. By contrast, the ISS is a complex and multi-spired mechanism, one of the largest and most complicated spacecraft ever created by humanity. Also, sunspots circle the Sun, whereas the ISS orbits the Earth. Transiting the Sun is not very unusual for the ISS, which orbits the Earth about every 90 minutes, but getting one’s location, timing and equipment just right for a great image is rare. The featured picture combined three images all taken in 2021 from the same location and at nearly the same time. One image — overexposed — captured the faint prominences seen across the top of the Sun, a second image — underexposed — captured the complex texture of the Sun’s chromosphere, while the third image — the hardest to get — captured the space station as it shot across the Sun in a fraction of a second. Close inspection of the space station’s silhouette even reveals a docked Dragon Crew capsule.
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José Molina Quijada was born in Madrid on Nov. 19, 1936 Jan 11th 2018
José Molina, a Spanish-born dancer who brought flamenco to audiences throughout the United States with his troupe and in regular television appearances, died on Jan. 5 in Manhattan. He was 81.
The cause was lung cancer, said Judith Shapiro, a friend and former student.
Mr. Molina left Spain for the United States in 1956 for an appearance on “The Steve Allen Show” and stayed. He soon joined the company of the famed flamenco dancer José Greco.
In 1961 he formed his own company, José Molina Bailes Españoles, which toured the United States for the next three decades.
“An arresting dancer, Mr. Molina at times performs with some of the outrageous panache of Rudolf Nureyev,” Jennifer Dunning of The New York Times wrote in a review of a Bailes Españoles performance at Carnegie Hall in 1978.
“Onstage, he exuded simplicity, charisma and charm,” she said by email. “The audience adored him.”
Later in life, Mr. Molina also made an impact as a teacher, introducing countless students to Spanish dance.
“He taught by example, and he didn’t lower his standards even when teaching beginners,” recalled Ms. Shapiro, who now teaches flamenco at the Alvin Ailey School. “He would say, ‘Better to do one thing right than 10 things badly.’ And students endured the endless repetition not only because of his expertise, but because he taught with such generosity, warmth, humor and charm. Everyone had a crush on him.” When, as a young boy, he took an interest in dance, his mother, Carmen, was supportive, but his father, Ramon, initially was not.
“He didn’t want his son to be a dancer,” Mr. Molina told The Palm Beach Post in 1972. “In those days they had prejudices about men in dance. Today — after I have become a success — he is proud of me and salutes my choice.”
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Kenny Werner (born November 19, 1951) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and author.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 19, 1951 and then growing up in Oceanside, Long Island, Werner began playing and performing at a young age, first appearing on television at the age of 11. Although he studied classical piano as a child, he enjoyed playing anything he heard on the radio and improvisation was his true calling. In high school and his first years of college he attended the Manhattan School of Music as a classical piano major.
His aptitude for improvisation led him to the Berklee College of Music in 1970, where he met and studied with his first piano/spiritual teacher, Madame Chaloff. From Boston, Werner traveled to Brazil with the saxophonist Victor Assis Brasil. There he met Assis’s twin brother, Brazilian pianist Joao Assis Brasil. His studies with Joao and Madame Chaloff would lead to the writing of the book Effortless Mastery.
more...NGC 1291, also known as NGC 1269, is a ring galaxy with an unusual inner bar and outer ring structure located about 33 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. It was discovered by James Dunlop in 1826 and subsequently entered into the New General Catalogue as NGC 1291 by Johan Ludvig Emil Dreyer. John Herschel then observed the same object in 1836 and entered it into the catalog as NGC 1269 without realizing that it was a duplicate. This galaxy was cited as an example of a “transitional galaxy” by NASA‘s Galaxy Evolution Explorer team in 2007.
NGC 1291 faces towards the Solar System nearly face-on. It has a prominent bulge, and is forming stars in its disk, albeit slowly, being a lenticular galaxy. Like other early-type galaxies, NGC 1291 has a population of old globular clusters. About 65% of them belong to the “blue” population that is more metal-poor, while the rest are “red” and more metal-rich.
Ingram Cecil Connor III (November 5, 1946 – September 19, 1973) Winter Haven, FL who was known professionally as Gram Parsons, was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and pianist. He recorded as a solo artist and with the International Submarine Band, the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers, popularizing what he called “Cosmic American Music”, a hybrid of country, rhythm and blues, soul, folk, and rock.
Parsons was born in Winter Haven, Florida, and developed an interest in country music while attending Harvard University. He founded the International Submarine Band in 1966, but the group disbanded prior to the 1968 release of its debut album, Safe at Home. Parsons joined the Byrds in early 1968 and played a pivotal role in the making of the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, a pioneering country rock album and a seminal progressive country recording. After leaving the group in late 1968, Parsons and fellow Byrd Chris Hillman formed The Flying Burrito Brothers in 1969; the band released its debut, The Gilded Palace of Sin, the same year. The album was well received but failed commercially. After a sloppy cross-country tour, the band hastily recorded Burrito Deluxe. Parsons was fired from the band before the album’s release in early 1970. Parsons spent the first half of 1971 with Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, living in his French villa Nellcôte during the recording sessions for Exile on Main Street, though he contributed very little to the recording process itself. After traveling around Britain with friends in late 1971, he was treated for heroinaddiction and returned to the U.S., where he was introduced to Emmylou Harris, who assisted him on vocals for his first solo record, GP, released in 1973. Although it received enthusiastic reviews, the release failed to chart. His health deteriorated due to several years of drug abuse culminating in his death from a toxic combination of morphine and alcohol in 1973 at the age of 26. A posthumous solo album, Grievous Angel, peaked at number 195 on the Billboard chart.
Parsons’s relatively short career was described by AllMusic as “enormously influential” for country and rock, “blending the two genres to the point that they became indistinguishable from each other.” He has been credited with helping to found the country rock and alt-country genres. His posthumous honors include the Americana Music Association “President’s Award” for 2003 and a ranking at No. 87 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
In the late 1960s, Parsons became enamored of and began to vacation at Joshua Tree National Park (then a National Monument) in southeastern California, where he frequently used psychedelics and reportedly experienced several UFO sightings. After splitting from Burrell, Parsons often spent his weekends in the area with Margaret Fisher and Phil Kaufman, with whom he had been living. Scheduled to resume touring in October 1973, Parsons decided to go on another recuperative excursion on September 17. Accompanying him were Fisher, personal assistant Michael Martin, and Martin’s girlfriend Dale McElroy. Kaufman later said that Parsons’ attorney was preparing divorce papers to serve to Burrell while Parsons remained in Joshua Tree on September 20.
During the trip, Parsons often retreated to the desert, while the group visited bars in the nearby hamlet of Yucca Valley on both nights of their stay. Parsons consumed large amounts of alcohol and barbiturates. On September 18, Martin drove back to Los Angeles to resupply the group with marijuana. That night, after challenging Fisher and McElroy to drink with him (Fisher disliked alcohol and McElroy was recovering from a bout of hepatitis), he said, “I’ll drink for the three of us,” and proceeded to drink six double tequilas. They then returned to the Joshua Tree Inn, where Parsons purchased morphine from an unknown young woman. After being injected by her in room #1, he overdosed. Fisher gave Parsons an ice-cube suppository, and later, a cold shower. Instead of moving Parsons around the room, she put him to bed in room #8 and went out to buy coffee in the hope of reviving him, leaving McElroy to stand guard. As his respirations became irregular and later ceased, McElroy attempted resuscitation. Her efforts failed and Fisher, watching from outside, was visibly alarmed. After further failed attempts, they decided to call an ambulance. Parsons was declared dead on arrival at Yucca Valley Hospital at 12:15 a.m. on September 19, 1973, in Yucca Valley. The official cause of death was an overdose of morphine and alcohol.
According to Fisher in the 2005 biography Grievous Angel: An Intimate Biography of Gram Parsons, the amount of morphine consumed by Parsons would be lethal to three regular users. Keith Richards stated in the 2004 documentary film Fallen Angel that Parsons understood the danger of combining opiates and alcohol and should have been more cautious. Upon Parsons’ death, Fisher and McElroy were returned to Los Angeles by Kaufman, who dispersed the remnants of Parsons’ drugs in the desert.
Before his death, Parsons said he wanted his body cremated at Joshua Tree and his ashes spread over Cap Rock, a prominent natural feature there. However, Parsons’ stepfather Bob organized a private ceremony back in New Orleans and neglected to invite any of his friends from the music industry.Two accounts state that Bob Parsons stood to inherit Gram’s share of his grandfather’s estate if he could prove that Gram was a resident of Louisiana, explaining his eagerness to have him buried there. To fulfill Parsons’ funeral wishes, Kaufman and a friend stole his body from Los Angeles International Airport and in a borrowed hearse, they drove it to Joshua Tree. Upon reaching the Cap Rock section of the park, they attempted to cremate Parsons’ body by pouring five gallons of gasoline into the open coffin and throwing a lit match inside; what resulted was an enormous fireball.
The two were arrested several days later. Since there was no law against stealing a dead body, they were only fined $750 for stealing the coffin and were not prosecuted for leaving 35 pounds (16 kg) of his charred remains in the desert. What remained of Parsons’ body was eventually buried in Garden of Memories Cemetery in Metairie, Louisiana.
more...Cindy Blackman Santana (born November 18, 1959), sometimes known as Cindy Blackman, is an American jazz and rock drummer. Blackman has recorded several jazz albums as a bandleader and has performed with Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Simmons, Ron Carter, Sam Rivers, Cassandra Wilson, Angela Bofill, Buckethead, Bill Laswell, Lenny Kravitz, Joe Henderson and Joss Stone.
Born November 18, 1959, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, her mother and grandmother were classical musicians and her uncle a vibist. When Cindy was a child, her mother took her to classical concerts.
more...Donald Eugene Cherry (November 18, 1936 – October 19, 1995) was an American jazz trumpeter. Beginning in the late 1950s, he had a long tenure performing in the bands of saxophonist Ornette Coleman, including on the pioneering free jazz albums The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) and Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960). Cherry also collaborated separately with musicians such as John Coltrane, Charlie Haden, Sun Ra, Ed Blackwell, the New York Contemporary Five, and Albert Ayler.
Cherry released his debut album as bandleader, Complete Communion, in 1966. In the 1970s, he became a pioneer in world fusion music, drawing on traditional African, Middle Eastern, and Hindustani music. He was a member of the ECM group Codona, along with percussionist Naná Vasconcelos and sitar and tabla player Collin Walcott. AllMusic called Cherry “one of the most influential jazz musicians of the late 20th century.” Cherry was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to a mother of Choctaw descent and an African-Americanfather.
Cherry died on October 19, 1995, at the age of 58 from liver cancer in Málaga, Spain. Cherry was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 2011.
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