mick laBriola

The two dominant galaxies near center are far far away, 12 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Great Bear. On the right, with grand spiral arms and bright yellow core is spiral galaxy M81. Also known as Bode’s galaxy, M81 spans some 100,000 light-years. On the left is cigar-shaped irregular galaxy M82. The pair have been locked in gravitational combat for a billion years. Gravity from each galaxy has profoundly affected the other during a series of cosmic close encounters. Their last go-round lasted about 100 million years and likely raised density waves rippling around M81, resulting in the richness of M81‘s spiral arms. M82 was left with violent star forming regions and colliding gas clouds so energetic that the galaxy glows in X-rays. In the next few billion years, their continuing gravitational encounters will result in a merger, and a single galaxy will remain. This extragalactic scenario also includes other members of the interacting M81 galaxy group with NGC 3077 below and right of the large spiral, and NGC 2976 at upper right in the frame. Captured under dark night skies in the Austrian Alps, the foreground of the wide-field image is filled with integrated flux nebulae. Those faint, dusty interstellar clouds reflect starlight above the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy.

Jeff “Tain” Watts (born January 20, 1960) is a jazz drummer who has performed with Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Betty Carter, Michael Brecker, Alice Coltrane, Ravi Coltrane, and others.

Watts got the nickname “Tain” from Kenny Kirkland when they were on tour in Florida and drove past a Chieftain gas station. He was given a Guggenheim fellowship in music composition in 2017. Watts attended Berklee College of Music, where he met collaborator Branford Marsalis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfV91l_t1J8

Wilbur James “Jimmy” Cobb (January 20, 1929 – May 24, 2020) was an American jazz drummer. He was part of Miles Davis‘s First Great Sextet. At the time of his death, he had been the band’s last surviving member for nearly thirty years. He was awarded an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship in 2009.

Cobb was born in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 1929. Before he began his music career, he listened to jazz albums and stayed awake into the late hours of the night in order to listen to Symphony Sidbroadcasting from New York City. Raised Catholic, he was also exposed to Church music.

Cobb started his touring career in 1950 with the saxophonist Earl Bostic. He subsequently performed with vocalist Dinah Washington, pianist Wynton Kelly, saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, bassist Keter Betts, Frank Wess, Leo Parker, and Charlie Rouse. His website also recounts his gigs with Billie Holiday, Pearl Bailey, and Dizzy Gillespie that took place before 1957.

A favorite dance among professional artists, Soleá por bulerías consists of a series of letras that include breaks of one or more compáses within the letra. Dancers will include “remates” – fast finishes or moments/spurts of footwork, for example, after the 1st line of a letra, which is standard practice, and even at the end of a compás while the singer is still singing. This creates a lively structure, though the dance and music also retains a majestic quality.

There is no standard music for the escobilla in this dance, though it’s parent form. the Soleares has easily recognizable music for its escobilla. Dancers usually request rhythm music in the tone and key of Soléa por bulerías for extended footwork sequences. The dance follows the same structure as the Soleares.

Guitar falsetas are often included as both an introduction to the song/dance, and throughout the dance as a vehicle for the dancer. Singers admire this song, and if they perform solo versions with the guitarist only, they usually sing anywhere from 2 to 20 letras in a performance. The Soléa por bulerías and Soleares por medio are often performed together.

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For our purposes, there are four features that distinguish the soleá por bulerías:

• The compás starts on 12, and is identical to that of the Alegrías;

• The pace is that of a slow to mid-tempo bulerías;

• The letras follow the form of soleares letras, though the repeats at the end of phrases can vary and are often extended;

• Often, although by no means always, there is a descending bass line in the guitar of D-C-Bb-A on beats 7-10, echoing similar lines found in soleares.

David Crosby was one of music’s most fascinating figures.

The singer-songwriter, who died this week at 81, was, to some, known as much for his belligerent attitude and struggles with addiction as his music.

But he was a genius artist whose work is among the most instrumental in the development of folk-rock.

“I know people tend to focus on how volatile our relationship has been at times, but what has always mattered to David and me more than anything was the pure joy of the music we created together, the sound we discovered with one another, and the deep friendship we shared over all these many long years,” his band mate Graham Nash wrote in tribute.

Crosby added an experimental yet refined edge to the folk and pop music that was dominant through the 1960s and 70s.

He made music alone, but his most celebrated work came as part of his time in acts like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and The Byrds.

Prodigiously talented and fearlessly creative, Crosby pushed musical boundaries in a way that many critics and peers couldn’t understand at the time, but that now position him as a key architect of a range of genres from soft rock to psych rock.

“David was fearless in life and in music,” Nash said.

“He leaves behind a tremendous void as far as sheer personality and talent in this world. He spoke his mind, his heart, and his passion through his beautiful music and leaves an incredible legacy. These are the things that matter most.”

The following five tracks merely scratch the surface of his incredible career.

Robert Allen Palmer (19 January 1949 – 26 September 2003) was an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. He was known for his powerful, soulful voice and sartorial elegance, and for his stylistic explorations, combining soul, funk, jazz, rock, pop, reggae, and blues. While his “four-decade career incorporated every genre of music”, Palmer is best known “for the pounding rock-soul classic, “Addicted to Love“, and its accompanying video, which came to epitomise the glamour and excesses of the 1980s.”

Having started in the music industry in the 1960s, including a spell with Vinegar Joe, he found success in the 1980s, both in his solo career and with the Power Station, scoring Top 10 hits in the United Kingdom and the United States. Three of his hit singles, including “Addicted to Love”, featured music videos directed by British fashion photographer Terence Donovan.

Palmer received a number of awards throughout his career, including two Grammy Awards for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance and an MTV Video Music Award. He was also nominated by the Brit Award for Best British Male Solo Artist. He died at age 54, following a heart attack.

Horace Parlan (January 19, 1931 – February 23, 2017) was an American pianist and composer known for working in the hard bop and post-bop styles of jazz. In addition to his work as a bandleader Parlan was known for his contributions to the Charles Mingus recordings Mingus Ah Um and Blues & Roots.

He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. In his birth year, Parlan was stricken with polio, resulting in the partial crippling of his right hand. The handicap contributed to his development of a particularly “pungent” left-hand chord voicing style, while comping with highly rhythmic phrases with the right.

Between 1952 and 1957, he worked in Washington D.C. with Sonny Stitt, then spent two years with Mingus’ Jazz Workshop. In 1973, Parlan moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. He later settled in the small village of Rude in southern Zealand. In 1974, he completed a State Department tour of Africa with Hal Singer.

Johnny Costa (born John Costanza; January 18, 1922 – October 11, 1996) was an American jazz pianist. Given the title “The White Art Tatum” by jazz legend Art Tatum, Costa is best known for his work as musical director of the children’s television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Costa learned to play accordion at age seven and was reading music three years later. Frank Oliver, Costa’s high school music teacher, urged him to learn the piano after discovering that Costa had perfect pitch. Costa graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with degrees in music and in education. In case he failed as a musician, Costa prepared himself to teach. On the day of his graduation, he began work as the house pianist for a radio station in Pittsburgh. Eventually he performed the same role for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. He provided piano and organ music for many programs, eventually teaming with Fred Rogers to arrange and perform the music heard on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Costa’s first recording was The Amazing Johnny Costa, a Savoy LP released in 1955 and reissued on CD as Neighborhood in 1989. Although his increasingly lucrative career was beginning to bring him international attention, the amount of time away from his family and friends led him to live and perform only in western Pennsylvania. He stopped traveling and gave up his job as musical director of The Mike Douglas Show. He returned to Pittsburgh and remained there for the rest of his life.

Marilyn Mazur (born January 18, 1955) is an American-born Danish percussionist. Since 1975, she has worked as a percussionist with various groups, among them Six Winds with Alex Riel. Mazur is primarily an autodidact, but she has a degree in percussion from the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

Mazur was born in New York City in 1955, from Polish and African-American parents, who moved with her to Denmark at age 6. She learned to play the piano, but when she was 19, she took up drumming, inspired by Al Foster, Airto Moreira, and Alex Riel. She started her first band in 1973, Zirenes. In 1978, she formed Primi, an all-woman theatre band. In 1985, she was asked to participate in the Palle Mikkelborg project that would become the Miles Davis album Aura, and soon after she went on the road with Miles Davis. Afterward, she played with Gil Evans, Wayne Shorter, Jan Garbarek, and Makiko Hirabayashi.