mick laBriola

Donald Douglas Lamond Jr. (August 18, 1920 – December 23, 2003) was an American jazz drummer.

Born in Oklahoma City, Lamond attended the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore in the early 1940s, and played with Sonny Dunham and Boyd Raeburn at the outset of his career. In 1944, he performed baritone saxophone and drums on Charlie Parker’s ‘’The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948’’ and he took over Dave Tough‘s spot in Woody Herman‘s big band First Herd in 1945, where he remained until the group disbanded at the end of 1946. In 1947, he briefly freelanced with musicians including Charlie Parker, and then returned to duty under Herman in his Second Herd, where he remained until its 1949 dissolution. In the 1950s and 1960s Lamond found work as a session musician, recording in a wide variety of styles. He performed and recorded with Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Johnny Smith, Benny Goodman, Ruby Braff, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, Sonny Stitt, Johnny Guarnieri, Jack Teagarden, Quincy Jones, George Russell, Count Basie, Lee Wiley (where he performed drums and guitar on her 1956 album ‘’West of the Moon’’ and Bob Crosby among others. He recorded as a bandleader in 1962 with a tentet which included Doc Severinsen. Later in the 1960s he played with George Wein‘s Newport Festival band. In the 1970s, he worked with Red Norvo, Maxine Sullivan, and Bucky Pizzarelli, and also put together his own swing group late in the decade, which recorded in 1977 and 1982. He also recorded a quartet album in 1981 with his wife, Terry Lamond, singing.

Antonio Salieri (18 August 1750 – 7 May 1825) was an Italian classical composer, conductor, and teacher. He was born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, and spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg monarchy.

Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary, and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers.

Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Habsburg court, a post he held from 1774 until 1792, Salieri dominated Italian-language opera in Vienna. During his career he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Paris, Rome, and Venice, and his dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. As the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824, he was responsible for music at the court chapel and attached school. Even as his works dropped from performance, and he wrote no new operas after 1804, he still remained one of the most important and sought-after teachers of his generation, and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna’s musical life. Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart were among the most famous of his pupils. Salieri’s music slowly disappeared from the repertoire between 1800 and 1868 and was rarely heard after that period until the revival of his fame in the late 20th century. This revival was due to the fictionalized depiction of Salieri in Peter Shaffer‘s play Amadeus (1979) and its 1984 film version. The death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791 at the age of 35 was followed by rumors that he and Salieri had been bitter rivals, and that Salieri had poisoned the younger composer, yet this has been proven false, and it is likely that they were, at least, mutually respectful peers.

The Sadr Region (also known as IC 1318 or the Gamma Cygni Nebula) is the diffuse emission nebula surrounding Sadr (γ Cygni) at the center of Cygnus’s cross. The Sadr Region is one of the surrounding nebulous regions; others include the Butterfly Nebula and the Crescent Nebula. It contains many dark nebulae in addition to the emission diffuse nebulae.

Sadr itself has approximately a magnitude of 2.2. The nebulous regions around the region are also fairly bright.

Luther Allison (August 17, 1939 – August 12, 1997) was an American blues guitarist. He was born in Widener, Arkansas, although some accounts suggest his actual place of birth was Mayflower, Arkansas. Allison was interested in music as a child and during the late 1940s he toured in a family gospel group called The Southern Travellers. He moved with his family to Chicago in 1951 and attended Farragut High School where he was classmates with Muddy Waters‘ son. He taught himself guitar and began listening to blues extensively. Three years later he dropped out of school and began hanging around outside blues nightclubs with the hopes of being invited to perform. Allison played with the bands of Howlin’ Wolf and Freddie King, taking over King’s band when King toured nationally.  He worked with Jimmy Dawkins, Magic Sam and Otis Rush, and also backed James Cotton.

From 1954, Allison jammed with his brother’s band, the Ollie Lee Allison Band. By 1957, he had formed a band with Ollie and another brother, Grant Allison, initially called The Rolling Stones, later changed to The Four Jivers, and they performed at clubs in Chicago.

Allison’s big break came in 1957, when Howlin’ Wolf invited him to the stage. The same year he worked briefly with Jimmy Dawkins, playing in local clubs. Freddie King took Allison under his wing, and after King got a record deal, Allison took over his gig in the house band of a club on Chicago’s West Side. He worked the club circuit in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During this period, Allison moved to California for a year where he worked with Shakey Jake Harris and Sunnyland Slim.He recorded his first single in 1965. He signed a recording contract with Delmark Records in 1967 and released his debut album, Love Me Mama, the following year. He performed a well-received set at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival and as a result was asked to perform there in each of the next three years. He toured nationwide. In 1972, he signed with Motown Records, one of the few blues artists on that label. In the mid-1970s he toured Europe. He moved to France in 1977.

Butch Thompson (born November 28, 1943 in Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota, died 14 August 2022 in Saint Paul, Minnesota) was an American jazz pianist and clarinetist best known for his ragtime and stride performances.He was tall with a distinctive mustache and magical fingers. Long fingers that ran down the Mississippi and connected to New Orleans.

Butch Thompson was a Minnesota musical giant, the original pianist on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion, a stride and ragtime piano expert who consulted on a Broadway musical, a pop musician who performed with orchestras from Cairo until Tokyo played.

“His knowledge of stride piano and ability to perform it was second to none,” said Steve Heckler, founder of the Twin Cities Jazz Festival, where Thompson played for many years.

“In a word, Butch was a musician,” said Crescent City trumpeter Clive Wilson, who performed regularly with Thompson at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. “It’s hard to imagine a world of New Orleans jazz without Butch.”

Thompson died Sunday at his home in St. Paul of complications from Alzheimer’s. He was 78.

“He wanted the end to come home and I was so happy that I could do that for him,” his wife, Mary Ellen Niedenfuer Thompson, said via email. “He knew he was home, he said he wanted to play the piano… through the fog of terminal dementia. I’m so glad he knew he was home with me and the dogs.”

“There was a handful of times we played an impromptu duet with the band, whereupon he turned to me and said, with a smile twitching from under his mustache in the manner of a compliment, ‘I’ve never heard anything like it! ‘” recalled Southside Aces leader Tony Balluff, who plays the clarinet, Thompson’s other instrument.

Though Thompson got his professional start on the clarinet as a teenager playing traditional jazz with the Hall Brothers, he rose to local prominence as the original resident pianist – and later music director – of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion (PHC).

“His piano and clarinet playing were the real deal,” said Richard Dworsky, Twin Cities’ piano maestro, who succeeded Thompson at PHC and has been with him on PHC cruises and in the 2006 Robert Altman film A Prairie Home Companion played. “Sometimes flashy and virtuoso, and sometimes spare, slow and soulful.”

Colleagues described Thompson as a humble, gentle man.

“He was very generous – he always wanted to make audiences happy – and his self-mockery was very famous,” said Michele Jansen, former general manager at KBEM-FM (Jazz 88), where Thompson hosted the weekly show “Jazz Originals” 25 For years, until 2017. “He was funny, with such a dry sense of humor.”

Patty Peterson’s program preceded Thompson’s on Sunday nights. “It was amazing how much money he was making in pledges in an hour because of his popularity,” she said.

Richard Thompson Jr. grew up in Marine on St. Croix and began taking piano lessons at the age of 6. There were two defining moments in his childhood: he saw a film of Sugar Chile Robinson playing boogie-woogie with tiny hands in the village hall, and at his own Junior High Talent Show in 1956, he got a rousing reaction to his boogie-woogie -Piano arrangement of Bill Haley & the Comets “Rock Around the Clock”.

As a child, Thompson became a serious record collector of jazz, which his father promoted, as well as rock ‘n’ roll and R&B. His interest was further sparked by attending concerts by jazz star Louis Armstrong and classical piano master Arthur Rubinstein in Minneapolis.

At Stillwater High School, Thompson took up the clarinet, which he began playing in sixth grade. With some classmates he formed Shirt Thompson and His Sleeves to play at dances.

In 1961, while studying at the University of Minnesota, the clarinettist sat in on the Hall Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band of Minneapolis. A year later, he officially joined the group and was playing seedy bars on Hennepin Avenue, despite not being old enough to buy a drink. Then, two months after signing, Thompson made his first trip to Crescent City.

“When I came to New Orleans, I was just blown away by this music,” he explained in a 2020 interview.

After two years of service in the Army, Thompson returned to the U. Unable to pay all the bills at the Hall Brothers concerts, he slogged away as a newspaper reporter, then taught ragtime piano and jazz history at the West Bank School of Music. In 1974 he began his twelve-year tenure at PHC.

The classical world also beckoned for a prominent soloist at pop concerts, beginning in 1987 with Thompson’s performance of Scott Joplin’s Suite for Piano and Orchestra. The pianist/clarinetist has traveled the world and played everywhere from Tokyo to Cairo.

Thompson has released more than two dozen albums under his own name and appeared on numerous other records, including a Grammy-winning 1996 project by trumpeter Doc Cheatham.

A well-known jazz historian, Thompson was a consultant on the 1992 Broadway musical “Jelly’s Last Jam,” about Jelly Roll Morton’s piano jazz.

Survivors include his wife, sons Victor and Sam; stepdaughter Frannie Christensen; Brothers Peter and John, sister Barbara Raff and two grandchildren. A private funeral will be held in Marine on St. Croix with a public celebration of life to be planned later.

William John Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer who mostly worked as the leader of a trio. His use of impressionist harmony, interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, block chords, and trademark rhythmically independent, “singing” melodic lines continues to influence jazz pianists today.

Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, United States, he was classically trained at Southeastern Louisiana University and the Mannes School of Music, in New York City, where he majored in composition and received the Artist Diploma. In 1955, he moved to New York City, where he worked with bandleader and theorist George Russell. In 1958, Evans joined Miles Davis‘s sextet, which in 1959, then immersed in modal jazz, recorded Kind of Blue, the best-selling jazz album ever.

In late 1959, Evans left the Miles Davis band and began his career as a leader, with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, a group now regarded as a seminal modern jazz trio. In 1961, two albums were recorded at an engagement at New York’s Village Vanguard jazz club, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby; a complete set of the Vanguard recordings on 3CDs was issued decades later. However, ten days after this booking ended, LaFaro died in a car accident. After months of seclusion, Evans reemerged with a new trio, featuring bassist Chuck Israels.

In 1963, Evans recorded Conversations with Myself, a solo album produced with overdubbing technology. In 1966, he met bassist Eddie Gómez, with whom he worked for the next 11 years. During the mid-1970s Bill Evans collaborated with the singer Tony Bennett on two critically acclaimed albums: The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album (1975) and Together Again (1977).

Many of Evans’s compositions, such as “Waltz for Debby“, have become standards, played and recorded by many artists. Evans received 31 Grammynominations and seven awards, and was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame.

Evans grew up in North Plainfield, New Jersey, the son of Harry and Mary Evans (née Soroka). His father was of Welsh descent and ran a golf course; his mother was of Ukrainian ancestry and descended from a family of coal miners. The marriage was stormy because of his father’s heavy drinking, gambling, and abuse. Bill had a brother, Harry (Harold), two years his senior, with whom he was very close.

Malcolm Earl “Mal” Waldron (August 16, 1925 – December 2, 2002) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He started playing professionally in New York in 1950, after graduating from college. In the following dozen years or so Waldron led his own bands and played for those led by Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy, among others. During Waldron’s period as house pianist for Prestige Recordsin the late 1950s, he appeared on dozens of albums and composed for many of them, including writing his most famous song, “Soul Eyes“, for Coltrane. Waldron was often an accompanist for vocalists, and was Billie Holiday‘s regular accompanist from April 1957 until her death in July 1959.

A breakdown caused by a drug overdose in 1963 left Waldron unable to play or remember any music; he regained his skills gradually, while redeveloping his speed of thought. He left the U.S. permanently in the mid-1960s, settled in Europe, and continued touring internationally until his death.

In his 50-year career, Waldron recorded more than 100 albums under his own name and more than 70 for other band leaders. He also wrote for modern ballet, and composed the scores of several feature films. As a pianist, Waldron’s roots lay chiefly in the hard bop and post-bop genres of the New York club scene of the 1950s, but with time he gravitated more towards free jazz. He is known for his dissonant chord voicings and distinctive later playing style, which featured repetition of notes and motifs.

Mal Waldron was born in New York City on August 16, 1925, to West Indian immigrants. His father was a mechanical engineer who worked on the Long Island Rail Road. The family moved to Jamaica, Queens when Mal was four years old. Waldron’s parents discouraged his initial interest in jazz, but he was able to maintain it by listening to swing on the radio. Waldron had classical piano lessons from the age of around seven until he was about 16. He then became inspired to play jazz on tenor saxophone when he heard Coleman Hawkins‘ 1939 recording of “Body and Soul“, but bought an alto saxophone, unable to afford a tenor. He played alto for local bands that performed for “dances, bar mitzvahs, Spanish weddings”, frequently taking over the pianist’s role when other musicians took their solos.