mick laBriola

Louis “Sabu” Martinez (July 14, 1930 – January 13, 1979) was an American conguero and percussionist. A prominent player in the Cubopmovement, Martinez appeared on many important recordings and live performances during that period. Martinez also recorded several Latin jazzalbums, now recognized as classics of the genre.

Born in New York City, Martinez made his professional debut in 1941 aged 11. He replaced Chano Pozo in Dizzy Gillespie‘s orchestra in 1948, and began performing with Benny Goodman‘s Bebop Orchestra in 1949. Over the next 15 years, Martinez worked with Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, J. J. Johnson, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Mary Lou Williams, Lionel Hampton, Noro Morales, Marcelino Guerra, Esy Morales, the Lecuona Cuban Boys, Miguelito Valdés, Tito Rodríguez, and the Joe Loco Trio. He also worked with vocalists Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Harry Belafonte.

Martinez first recorded with Art Blakey in 1953, and contributed to his Orgy in Rhythm and Holiday for Skins projects from 1957 to 1958. Martinez became a bandleader in 1957, recording his debut album, Palo Congo, for the Blue Note label. He followed it up with releases on Vik and Alegre Records. Martinez moved to Sweden in 1967 and recorded with the Francy Boland–Kenny Clarke big band, releasing two albums. Subsequently, he led the group Burnt Sugar, which was active into the mid 1970s. On January 13, 1979, he died in Sweden at the age of 48 from a gastric ulcer.

Alan Dawson (July 14, 1929 – February 23, 1996) was an American jazz drummer and percussion teacher based in Boston.

Alan Dawson was born in Marietta, Pennsylvania, United States, and raised in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he played with the Army Dance Band while stationed at Fort Dix from 1951 to 1953. During his tenure, Alan explored the post-bop era by performing with pianist Sabby Lewis. After being discharged from the Army, Dawson toured Europe with Lionel Hampton.

In early 1960, he was based in Boston, for a regular engagement with John Neves, bass, and Leroy Flander, piano.

Dawson was an early teacher of drummers Tony Williams and Joseph Smyth, known for his work with the Sawyer Brown country music group. Other students included Terri Lyne Carrington, Julian Vaughn, Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Smith, Kenwood Dennard, Gerry Hemingway, Jeff Sipe, Billy Kilson, Joe Farnsworth, and many others. Dawson began teaching at Berklee College of Musicin 1957. He suffered a ruptured disc in 1975 which led to him halting his touring schedule, to leave Berklee and limit his teaching to his home in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Dawson’s teaching style emphasized the music as a whole rather than concentrating on percussion alone. He stressed the importance of learning the melody and structure of the tune to better fulfill the role of accompaniment. For this purpose, he had students play over standards while also singing the melody out loud. He constantly strived for balance between musical ideas and strict technique. He was big on rudiments and wrote extensive exercises intended to be practiced with brushes. He believed using brushes with his “Rudimental Ritual” would reduce stick rebound, allowing the sense of “picking up” the sticks.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (/ˈɡʌθri/; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter who was one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. His music includes songs such as “This Land Is Your Land“, written in response to the American exceptionalist song “God Bless America“, and has inspired several generations both politically and musically.

Guthrie wrote hundreds of country, folk, and children’s songs, along with ballads and improvised works. Dust Bowl Ballads, Guthrie’s album of songs about the Dust Bowl period, was included on Mojo magazine’s list of 100 Records That Changed The World, and many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Songwriters who have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence on their work include Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Jeff Tweedy, Tom Paxton, Brian Fallon, Sean Bonnette, and Sixto Rodríguez . He frequently performed with the message “This machine kills fascists” displayed on his guitar.

Guthrie was brought up by middle-class parents in Okemah, Oklahoma, until he was 14, when his mother Nora was hospitalized as a consequence of Huntington’s disease, a fatal hereditary neurological disorder. His father moved to Pampa, Texas, to repay debts from unsuccessful real estate deals. During his early teens, Guthrie learned folk and blues songs from his parents’ friends. He married at 19, but with the advent of the dust stormsthat marked the Dust Bowl period, he left his wife and three children to join the thousands of Okies who were migrating to California looking for employment. He worked at Los Angeles radio station KFVD, achieving some fame from playing hillbilly music, made friends with Will Geer and John Steinbeck, and wrote a column for the communist newspaper People’s World from May 1939 to January 1940.

Throughout his life, Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, although he did not appear to belong to any. With the outbreak of World War II and the non-aggression pact the Soviet Union had signed with Germany in 1939, the anti-Stalin owners of KFVD radio were not comfortable with Guthrie’s political leanings after he wrote a song praising the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the Soviet partition of Poland. He left the station, ending up in New York where he wrote and recorded his 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads, based on his experiences during the 1930s, which earned him the nickname the “Dust Bowl Troubadour”.^[13] In February 1940 he wrote his most famous song, “This Land Is Your Land“. He said it was a response to what he felt was the overplaying of Irving Berlin‘s “God Bless America” on the radio.

Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children. His son Arlo Guthrie became nationally known as a musician. Woody died in 1967 from complications of Huntington’s disease. His first two daughters also died of the disease. During his later years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie became an icon in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk and country musicians, including mentoring Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan. Woody Guthrie died of complications of Huntington’s disease on October 3, 1967. By the time of his death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them through Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, his ex-wife Marjorie and other new members of the folk revival, and his son Arlo.

Teaching a Rhythm Roots Workshop @ Walker Methodist Health Center (https://www.walkermethodist.org/locations/health-center). Working with Seniors celebrating world drumming and world cultures. On Wednesdays July 6th thru August 31st 2022. 1030am-noon.

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.

Called the Cosmic Cliffs, Webb’s seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, and the tallest “peaks” in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image.

The blistering, ultraviolet radiation from the young stars is sculpting the nebula’s wall by slowly eroding it away. Dramatic pillars tower above the glowing wall of gas, resisting this radiation. The “steam” that appears to rise from the celestial “mountains” is actually hot, ionized gas and hot dust streaming away from the nebula due to the relentless radiation.

Webb reveals emerging stellar nurseries and individual stars that are completely hidden in visible-light pictures. Because of Webb’s sensitivity to infrared light, it can peer through cosmic dust to see these objects. Protostellar jets, which emerge clearly in this image, shoot out from some of these young stars. The youngest sources appear as red dots in the dark, dusty region of the cloud. Objects in the earliest, rapid phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but Webb’s extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability can chronicle these elusive events.

These observations of NGC 3324 will shed light on the process of star formation. Star birth propagates over time, triggered by the expansion of the eroding cavity. As the bright, ionized rim moves into the nebula, it slowly pushes into the gas and dust. If the rim encounters any unstable material, the increased pressure will trigger the material to collapse and form new stars.

Conversely, this type of disturbance may also prevent star formation as the star-making material is eroded away. This is a very delicate balance between sparking star formation and stopping it. Webb will address some of the great, open questions of modern astrophysics: What determines the number of stars that form in a certain region? Why do stars form with a certain mass?

Webb will also reveal the impact of star formation on the evolution of gigantic clouds of gas and dust. While the effect of massive stars – with their violent winds and high energy – is often apparent, less is known about the influence of the more numerous low-mass stars. As they form, these smaller stars create narrow, opposing jets seen here, which can inject a lot of momentum and energy into the clouds. This reduces the fraction of nebular material that seeds new stars.

Up to this point, scientists have had very little data about the influence of the multitude of young and more energetic low-mass stars. With Webb, they will be able to obtain a full census of their number and impact throughout the nebula.

Located roughly 7,600 light-years away, NGC 3324 was imaged by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail.

Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks.

The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb’s NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features. Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions, as Webb seeks the earliest galaxies in the universe.

Theatre 55 (https://theatre55.org) presents JCSS in an outdoor setting at Caponi Art Park in Eagan(https://www.caponiartpark.org). Running Friday July 15th thru Sunday July 24th. Music by Raymond Berg, Jamie Carter, Lyra Olson and mick laBriola. Featuring Van Nixon as the Black Jesus.

WR 134 is a variable Wolf-Rayet star located around 6000 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus, surrounded by a faint bubble nebula blown by the intense radiation and fast wind from the star. It is five times the radius of the sun, but due to a temperature over 63,000 K it is 400,000 times as luminous as the Sun.
WR 134 was one of three stars in Cygnus observed in 1867 to have unusual spectra consisting of intense emission lines rather than the more normal continuum and absorption lines. These were the first members of the class of stars that came to be called Wolf-Rayet stars (WR stars) after Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet who discovered their unusual appearance. It is a member of the nitrogen sequence of WR stars, while the other two (WR 135 and WR 137) are both members of the carbon sequence that also have OB companions.