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Mark Freuder Knopfler OBE (born 12 August 1949) is a British guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was the lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of the British rock band Dire Straits from the group’s formation in 1977 until their dissolution in 1995. He pursued a solo career after the group disbanded, and is now an independent artist.
Knopfler was born in Glasgow, and raised in Blyth, near Newcastle, England. After graduating from the University of Leeds and working for three years as a college lecturer, Knopfler co-founded Dire Straits with his younger brother, David Knopfler. The band recorded six albums, including Brothers in Arms (1985), one of the best-selling albums in history. After Dire Straits permanently disbanded in 1995, Knopfler began a solo career, and has produced nine solo albums. He has composed and produced film scores for nine films, including Local Hero (1983), Cal (1984), The Princess Bride (1987), Wag the Dog (1997) and Altamira(2016). He has produced albums for Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, and Randy Newman.
Described by Classic Rock as a virtuoso, Knopfler is a fingerstyle guitarist and was ranked 27th on Rolling Stone‘s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.With Dire Straits, Knopfler sold between 100 million and 120 million records. A four-time Grammy Awardwinner, Knopfler is the recipient of the Edison Award, the Steiger Award and the Ivor Novello Award, as well as holding three honorary doctorate degrees in music from universities in the United Kingdom. Knopfler was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Dire Straits in 2018.
more...Roy James Gaines (August 12, 1937 – August 11, 2021) was an American Texas blues and electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He wrote and recorded the song “A Hell of a Night”, which was first issued on his 1982 album Gainelining. He was the younger brother of the blues musician Grady Gaines.
Gaines was born in Waskom, Texas on August 12, 1937, and relocated with his family to Houston when he was six years old. Originally a piano devotee, Gaines moved to playing the guitar in his adolescence. In his teens he was acquainted with another budding guitarist, Johnny Copeland. By the age of 14 he had performed onstage backing his hero, T-Bone Walker, and played in Houston nightclubs. He later moved to Los Angeles, California.
more...Sunday August 11th 2024 930am service accompaniment with Jayson Rodovsky and quartet and choir. Jazz Service. At Redeemer Lutheran Church in White Bear Lake.
more...NGC 3521 is a flocculent intermediate spiral galaxy located around 26 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Leo. It has a morphological classificationof SAB(rs)bc, which indicates that it is a spiral galaxy with a trace of a bar structure (SAB), a weak inner ring (rs), and moderate to loosely wound arm structure (bc).The bar structure is difficult to discern, both because it has a low ellipticity and the galaxy is at a high inclination of 72.7° to the line of sight. The relatively bright bulge is nearly 3/4 the size of the bar, which may indicate the former is quite massive. The nucleus of this galaxy is classified as an HII LINER, as there is an H II region at the core and the nucleus forms a low-ionization nuclear emission-line region.
John Arthur “Johnny” Van Derrick (* 11 August 1926 in Ealing; † 15 May 1995 in Denham, Buckinghamshire) was a British Jazz violinist, who also worked as session musician in pop music.
Van Derrick was introduced to music by his father, a Dutch cornet player. He attended the conservatory in Brussels, and until the outbreak of the Second World War he received a classical musical training. In London during the war he played trumpet in dance bands, initially Louis Mexano’s Accordion Band, before joining the merchant navy. In the post-war years he played trumpet in the dance bands of Maurice Winnick and Lou Preager. Subsequently, he took violin lessons with his mentor Sascha Lasserson and played in the Halle Orchestra, before setting up as a freelance musician. He appeared with Roy Fox and Geraldo, and in the early 1960s played in the Diz Disley String Quintet, with which he made his first recording (At the Jazz Band Ball), as well as with Tubby Hayes, Gary Potter and the Jack Toogood Swingtet. In 1976, after serious illness, he was able to start working again.
more...Jess Alexandria Stacy (born Jesse Alexander Stacy;August 11, 1904 – January 1, 1995) was an American jazz pianist who gained prominence during the swing era. He may be best remembered for his years with the Benny Goodman band during the late 1930s, particularly his performance at Goodman’s 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall.
Jess Stacy was born in Bird’s Point, Missouri, a small town across the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois, to Frederick Lee Stacy, a railroad engineer, and Sara (Alexander) Stacy, a seamstress. His first piano teacher was Mabel Irene Bailey, who played piano for silent movies.
more...Messier 20, popularly known as the Trifid Nebula, lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region in the plane of our galaxy, the Trifid does illustrate three different types of astronomical nebulae; red emission nebulae dominated by light from hydrogen atoms, blue reflection nebulae produced by dust reflecting starlight, and dark nebulae where dense dust clouds appear in silhouette. The reddish emission region, roughly separated into three parts by obscuring dust lanes, is what lends the Trifid itspopular name. The cosmic cloud complex is over 40 light-years across and would cover the area of a full moon on planet Earth’s sky. But the Trifid Nebula is too faint to be seen by the unaided eye. Over 75 hours of image data captured under dark night skies was used to create this stunning telescopic view.
Ian Scott Anderson MBE (born 10 August 1947) is a British musician best known for his work as the singer, flautist, acoustic guitarist, primary songwriter, and sole continuous member of the rock band Jethro Tull. He is a multi-instrumentalist who also plays harmonica, keyboards, bass guitar, bouzouki, balalaika, saxophoneand a variety of whistles. His solo work began with Walk into Light in 1983; since then he has released another five albums, including the sequel to the 1972 Jethro Tull album Thick as a Brick, titled TaaB 2: Whatever Happened to Gerald Bostock? (2012).
more...Clarence Leonidas Fender (August 10, 1909 – March 21, 1991 Anaheim, CA) was an American inventor and founder of the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.
Fender designed the company’s iconic early instruments: the Fender Telecaster, the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar; the Fender Stratocaster, among the most iconic electric guitars; and the Fender Precision Bass, which set the standard for electric basses. He also designed the Fender Bassman amplifier, which became the archetype for later amplifiers (notably by Marshall and Mesa Boogie) that dominated rock and roll music. Fender, who was not a guitarist himself, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.
more...Charles H. Israels (born August 10, 1936) is an American jazz composer, arranger, and bassist who is best known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio. He has also worked with Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock, J. J. Johnson, John Coltrane, and Judy Collins. He has won one Grammy in 2020 for his work on mezzo-sopranoJoyce DiDonato‘s album “Songplay”.
Born in New York City, Chuck Israels was raised in a musical family which moved to Cleveland, Ohio, when he was 10. His stepfather Mordecai Bauman was a singer who performed extensively with composer Hanns Eisler. He, along with Israels’ mother, Irma Commanday, created a home environment in which music was a part of normal daily activity. Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and The Weavers were visitors to the Bauman home. In 1948, the appearance of Louis Armstrong‘s All Stars in a concert series produced by his parents gave him his first opportunity to meet and hear jazz musicians.
In college, Israels had the opportunity to perform with Billie Holiday. His first professional job after college was working with pianist Bud Powell in Paris. His first professional recording was Stereo Drive (aka Coltrane Time) with John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Kenny Dorham, and Louis Hayes. The recording showcased Israels as a composer with his composition “Double Clutching”. Israels is best known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio from 1961 through 1966, having replaced the deceased Scott LaFaro, and for the Jazz Repertory as Director of the National Jazz Ensemble from 1973 to 1981. He made recordings with Kronos Quartet and Rosemary Clooney in 1985. He was the Director of Jazz Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington until 2010. In 2011, he created the Chuck Israels Jazz Orchestra and recorded Second Wind: A Tribute to the Music of Bill Evans in 2013. In 2020 Chuck Israels received a GRAMMY for his work on mezzo-sopranoJoyce DiDonato‘s album “Songplay”.
more...Gertrude E. “Trudy” Pitts (August 10, 1932 – December 19, 2010) was an American soul jazz keyboardist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was known primarily for playing the Hammond B3 organ.
Trained as a musician and a music educator, Pitts studied at the Philadelphia Musical Academy (now the University of the Arts), Temple University, and Juilliard, as well as other institutions. Early work experience included a position as an assistant to the pianist in the Tony Award-winning musical Raisin.
more...Friday August 9th 2024 6pm Shabbat service with Inbal-Sharett-Singer, Jayson Rodovsky, Jeff Bailey, Pete Whitman and mick laBriola.
more...Denizens of planet Earth typically watch meteor showers by looking up. But this remarkable view, captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan, caught a Perseid meteor by looking down. From Garan’s perspective on board the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of about 380 kilometers, the Perseid meteors streak below, swept up dust from comet Swift-Tuttle. The vaporizing comet dust grains are traveling at about 60 kilometers per second through the denser atmosphere around 100 kilometers above Earth’s surface. In this case, the foreshortened meteor flash is near frame center, below the curving limb of the Earth and a layer of greenish airglow, just below bright star Arcturus. Want to look up at a meteor shower? You’re in luck, as the 2024 Perseid meteor shower is active now and predicted to peak near August 12. With interfering bright moonlight absent, this year you’ll likely see many Perseid meteors under clear, dark skies after midnight.
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