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Gamma Cassiopeiae shines high in northern autumn evening skies. It’s the brightest spiky star in this telescopic field of view toward the constellation Cassiopeia. Gamma Cas shares the ethereal-looking scene with ghostly interstellar clouds of gas and dust, IC 59 (top left) and IC 63. About 600 light-years distant, the clouds aren’t actually ghosts. They are slowly disappearing though, eroding under the influence of energetic radiation from hot and luminous gamma Cas. Gamma Cas is physically located only 3 to 4 light-years from the nebulae. Slightly closer to gamma Cas, IC 63 is dominated by red H-alpha light emitted as hydrogen atoms ionized by the star’s ultraviolet radiation recombine with electrons. Farther from the star, IC 59 shows proportionally less H-alpha emission but more of the characteristic blue tint of dust reflected star light. The cosmic stage spans over 1 degree or 10 light-years at the estimated distance of gamma Cas and friends.
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Richard Bona (born 28 October 1967) is a Cameroon-born American multi-instrumentalist and singer.
Bona Penda Nya Yuma Elolo was born in Minta, Cameroon, into a family of musicians, which enabled him to start learning music from a young age. His grandfather was a griot – a West African singer of praise and storyteller – and percussionist, as his mother was a singer. When he was four years old, Bona started to play the balafon. At the age of five, he began performing at his village church. Not being wealthy, Bona made many of his own instruments: including flutes and guitars (with cords strung over an old motorcycle tank).
His talent was quickly noticed, and he was often invited to perform at festivals and ceremonies. Bona began learning to play the guitar at the age of 11, and in 1980, aged just 13, he assembled his first ensemble for a French jazz club in Douala. The owner befriended him and helped him discover jazz music, in particular that of Jaco Pastorius, which inspired Bona to switch his focus to the electric bass.
more...Keith Anderson CD (28 October 1944 – 27 March 2020), better known by the stage name Bob Andy, was a Jamaican reggae vocalist and songwriter. He was widely regarded as one of reggae’s most influential songwriters.
Anderson was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in October 1944, where his mother worked at Up-Park Camp.At the age of seven he moved to live with his grandmother in Westmoreland. After his grandmother died, his mother gave him away, and he was subject to beatings at the hands of his adoptive parents.
After several years he returned to Kingston to help look after one of his siblings, but to escape beatings from his mother, he tried to get a place at Maxfield Park children’s home by telling them that his mother had died. They both ended up in court, where he was made a ward of the state and returned to Maxfield Park. At the home, he taught himself to play piano, and began singing in the Kingston Parish Church choir. In the local scout troop he met Tyrone Evans, with whom he formed the Binders.
more...Glen Moore (born October 28, 1941) is an American jazz bassist, who occasionally performs on piano, flute and violin.
Moore was born in Portland, Oregon, United States. His performing career began at age 14 with the Young Oregonians in Portland, where he met and played with Native American saxophonist, Jim Pepper. He graduated with a degree in History and Literature from the University of Oregon. His formal bass instruction started after college with Jerome Magil in Portland, James Harnett in Seattle, Gary Karr in New York, Plough Christenson in Copenhagen, Ludwig Streicher in Vienna and Francois Rabbath in Hawaii. His main instrument is an upright bass which was made by Klotz in Tyrol around 1715. He mostly plays it in a personal unique tuning, using a low and a high C string.
Moore is a founding member of Oregon, but worked also regularly with Rabih Abou-Khalil, Vasant Rai, Nancy King and Larry Karush.
more...Performing with Rachel Spiller and Tami Morse Friday 10-27-23 630pm
more...History’s second known periodic comet is Comet Encke (2P/Encke). As it swings through the inner Solar System, Encke’s orbit takes it from an aphelion, its greatest distance from the Sun, inside the orbit of Jupiter to a perihelion just inside the orbit of Mercury. Returning to its perihelion every 3.3 years, Encke has the shortest period of the Solar System’s major comets. Comet Encke is also associated with (at least) two annual meteor showers on planet Earth, the North and South Taurids. Both showers are active in late October and early November. Their two separate radiants lie near bright star Aldebaran in the head-strong constellation Taurus. A faint comet, Encke was captured in this telescopic field of view imaged on the morning of August 24. Then, Encke’s pretty greenish coma was close on the sky to the young, embedded star cluster and light-years long, tadpole-shaped star-forming clouds in emission nebula IC 410. Now near bright star Spica in Virgo Comet Encke passed its 2023 perihelion only five days ago, on October 22.
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American jazz bassist, born 27 October 1970. Since moving to New York City in 1993, Carlo De Rosa has had the opportunity to work with many great artists in the Latin and Jazz World. work with a wide variety of artists such as Ray Barretto, Ravi Coltrane, William Cepeda, Vijay Iyer, Bruce Barth, Ed Thigpen.
more...George Wallington (October 27, 1924 – February 15, 1993) was an American jazz pianist and composer.
Wallington was born Giacinto Figlia (some sources give “Giorgio”) in Sicily, and then moved to the United States (New York) with his family in 1925. His father sang opera and introduced his son to classical music, but Wallington listened to jazz after hearing the music of saxophonist Lester Young. He said that he acquired the name Wallington in high school: “I like to wear flashy clothes […] and the kids in the neighborhood would say, ‘Hey, look at Wallington!'” He left school at the age of 15 to play piano in New York.
From 1943 to 1953, Wallington played with Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Marsala, Charlie Parker, Serge Chaloff, Allen Eager, Kai Winding, Terry Gibbs, Brew Moore, Al Cohn, Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, and Red Rodney, and recorded as a leader for Savoy and Blue Note (1950). Wallington toured Europe in 1953 with Lionel Hampton‘s big band. In 1954-60, he led bands in New York that contained rising musicians including Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, and Phil Woods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfC8vdBK9dc&list=PL0q2VleZJVEl3TFB5uDCV6j1dTYu_BEDi&index=2
more...Philip Catherine (born 27 October 1942) is a Belgian jazz guitarist. Philip Catherine was born in London, England, to an English mother and Belgian father, and was raised in Brussels, Belgium. His grandfather was a violinist in the London Symphony Orchestra. Catherine started on guitar in his teens, and by seventeen he was performing professionally at local venues.
He released his debut album, Stream, in 1972. During the next few years, he studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston and with Mick Goodrick and George Russell. In 1976, he and guitarist Larry Coryell recorded and toured as an acoustic duo. The same year, when Jan Akkerman abruptly left Focus, Catherine replaced him in the band. The following year, he recorded with Charles Mingus, who dubbed him “Young Django”. In the early 1980s, he toured briefly with Benny Goodman. He was in trio with Didier Lockwood and Christian Escoudé, then in a trio with Chet Baker. During the 1990s, he recorded three albums with trumpeter Tom Harrell.
more...Babs Gonzales (October 27, 1919 – January 23, 1980), born Lee Brown, was an American bebopvocalist, poet, and self-published author. His books portrayed the jazz world that many black musicians struggled in, portraying disk jockeys, club owners, liquor, drugs, and racism. “There are jazz people whose influence can be described as minor,” wrote Val Wilmer, “yet who are well-known to musicians and listeners alike … You’d have to be hard-pressed to ignore the wealth of legend that surrounds Babs Gonzales.” Jazz writer Jack Cooke explained that Gonzales “assumed the role of spokesman for the whole hipster world… [becoming] something more than just a good and original jazz entertainer: the incarnation of a whole social group.”
Gonzales was born Lee Brown in Newark, New Jersey, United States. He was raised solely by his mother Lottie Brown alongside two brothers. Of his nickname, Gonzales explained, “my brothers are basketball players… there was a basketball star in America named Big Babbiad, and so they were called Big Babs, Middle Babs, and I’m Little Babs.” As a young man, Gonzales worked as band boy for swing bandleader Jimmie Lunceford, after which he relocated to Los Angeles. To circumvent racial segregation, Gonzales wore a turban and used the pseudonym Ram Singh, passing as an Indian national.
more...While not as formulaic as sevillanap, alegria dance accompaniment does have a set of distinct “song parts” which, in more traditional arrangements, are often assembled in a predictable order. Many of the same principles apply to solo instrumental arrangements as well.
Structure and Compas
The basic structure of alegria por baile (“for dance”) can be schematized like this:
- Intro
- Copla (verse) & Falseta (guitar melody)
- Footwork
- Silencio
- Castellana
- Escobilla
- Buleria
Within this basic schema, sections can be rearranged, doubled, or eliminated altogether.
The compas of alegria is based in 12s and, like solea, is accented on the 3, 6, 8, 10, and 12 beats:
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This Picture of the Week prominently features two galaxies: NGC 3558 in the lower left, and LEDA 83465 in the upper right. Both galaxies lie roughly 450 million light years from Earth. The two galaxies are separated from one another by a distance of roughly 150 000 light years, which might sound vast, until we consider that our nearest galactic neighbour — the Andromeda galaxy — is a whopping 2.5 million light years distant from the Milky Way galaxy. In galactic terms, the two galaxies pictured here are practically on top of one another.
This is because they belong to a crowded and chaotic galaxy cluster known as Abell 1185, which is packed with galaxies that are interacting with one another via gravity. These galactic interactions have sometimes led to dramatic results, such as galaxies being torn apart completely. This fate has not befallen NGC 3558, which currently retains its integrity as both an elliptical galaxy and a low-ionisation nuclear emission-line region, or LINER. In fact, it probably attained its present form by devouring smaller galaxies in the cluster — galaxies much like LEDA 83465.
LINERs are a particular type of galactic nucleus or core, and are distinguished by the chemical fingerprints written into the light that they emit. As their name suggests, LINERs emit light which suggests that many of the atoms and molecules within these galactic cores have either been weakly ionised or not ionised at all. Ionisation is the process by which atoms or molecules lose or gain electrons. In galaxies, it is driven by a variety of processes — from shockwaves travelling through galaxies, to radiation from massive stars or from hot gas in accretion discs. In the case of LINERs, this means that many of the atoms and molecules within the galaxies have lost either a single electron, or have retained all their electrons. The mechanism that drives this weak ionisation in LINERs such as NGC 3558 is still debated amongst astronomers.
[Image Description: Two galaxies are prominent among many much smaller background galaxies in the darkness of space. The larger galaxy is an elliptical galaxy, radiating light in a perfectly even sphere from a bright centre. The smaller galaxy is a barred spiral, with arms that are wispy like fog connected to a bar crossing the galaxy’s shining core. The shape of the arms makes the smaller galaxy notably squarish.]
more...William Earl “Bootsy” Collins (born October 26, 1951 Cincinnati, OH) is an American bass guitarist, singer-songwriter, and record producer.
Rising to prominence with James Brown in the early 1970s before joining the Parliament-Funkadeliccollective, Collins established himself as one of the leading names and innovators in funk with his driving basslines and humorous vocals. He later formed his own P-Funk side project known as Bootsy’s Rubber Band. He was a frequent collaborator with other musicians from a variety of genres, including dance music (Deee-Lite‘s “Groove Is in the Heart“), electronic big beat (Fatboy Slim‘s “Weapon of Choice“), and alternative metal (Praxis), among others. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. In 2020, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Collins number 4 in its list of the 50 greatest bassists of all time.
more...Eddie Henderson (born October 26, 1940) is an American jazz trumpet and flugelhorn player. He came to prominence in the early 1970s as a member of pianist Herbie Hancock‘s Mwandishi band, going on to lead his own electric/fusion groups through the decade. Henderson earned his medical degree and worked a parallel career as a psychiatrist and musician, turning back to acoustic jazz by the 1990s.
Henderson was born in New York City on October 26, 1940. At the age of nine he was given an informal lesson by Louis Armstrong, and he continued to study the instrument as a teenager in San Francisco, where he grew up, after his family moved there in 1954, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Henderson was influenced by the early fusion work of jazz musician Miles Davis, who was a friend of his parents. They met in 1957 when Henderson was aged seventeen.
more...Charles Daly Barnet (October 26, 1913 – September 4, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader.
His major recordings were “Skyliner”, “Cherokee“, “The Wrong Idea”, “Scotch and Soda”, “In a Mizz”, and “Southland Shuffle”.
Barnet was born in New York City, the son of Charline (Daly) and Willard Barnet. His parents divorced when he was two, and he was raised by his mother and her grandparents. His grandfather was Charles Frederick Daly, a vice-president for the New York Central Railroad, banker, and businessman.
Barnet attended boarding schools, both in the New York and Chicago areas. He learned to play piano and saxophone as a child. He often left school to listen to music and to try to gain work as a musician. Although his family wanted him to become a lawyer, he chose to be a musician instead.
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