mick laBriola

The International Space Station. Using precise timing, the Earth-orbiting space platform was photographed in front of a partially lit gibbous Moon last month. The featured composite, taken from Payson, Arizona, USA last month, was intricately composed by combining, in part, many 1/2000-second images from a video of the ISS crossing the Moon. A close inspection of this unusually crisp ISS silhouette will reveal the outlines of numerous solar panels and trusses. The bright crater Tycho is visible on the upper left, as well as comparatively rough, light colored terrain known as highlands, and relatively smooth, dark colored areas known as maria. On-line tools can tell you when the International Space Station will be visible from your area.

David Warren Brubeck (/ˈbruːbɛk/; December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. Many of his compositions have become jazz standards including “In Your Own Sweet Way” and “The Duke”. Brubeck’s style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting both his mother’s classical training and his own improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures as well as superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.

Brubeck experimented with time signatures throughout his career, recording “Unsquare Dance” in ⁷₄, “World’s Fair” in ¹³₈, and “Blue Rondo à la Turk” in ⁹₈. He was also a composer of orchestral and sacred music and wrote soundtracks for television, such as Mr. Broadway and the animated miniseries This Is America, Charlie Brown.

Often incorrectly attributed to Brubeck, the song “Take Five“, which has become a jazz standard, was composed by Brubeck’s long-time musical partner, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. Appearing on one of the top-selling jazz albums, Time Out, and written in ⁵₄ time, “Take Five” has endured as a jazz classic associated with Brubeck.

Dave Brubeck was born in Concord, California, and grew up in Ione, California. His father, Peter Howard “Pete” Brubeck, was a cattle rancher. His mother, Elizabeth (née Ivey), who had studied piano in England under Myra Hess and intended to become a concert pianist, taught piano for extra money.

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. It is 1,344 ± 20 light-years(412.1 ± 6.1 pc) away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light-years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.

The Orion Nebula is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky and is among the most intensely studied celestial features. The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary disks and brown dwarfs within the nebula, intense and turbulent motions of the gas, and the photo-ionizing effects of massive nearby stars in the nebula.

Egberto Amin Gismonti (born December 5, 1947 in Carmo, state of Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian composer, guitarist and pianist. Gismonti was born in the small city of Carmo, state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, into a musical family. His mother was from Sicily and his father was from Beirut, Lebanon. At the age of six, he started studying the piano at the Brazilian Conservatory of Music. After studying the classical repertoire in Brazil for fifteen years, he went to Paris, France, to delve into modern music. He studied with Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), after acceptance as a student by the composer Jean Barraqué, a student of Anton Webern and Schoenberg. Boulanger encouraged Gismonti to write the collective Brazilian experience into his music.

Gismonti is a self-taught guitarist. After returning to Brazil, he designed guitars with more than six strings, expanding the possibilities of the instrument. Approaching the fretboard as if it were a keyboard, Gismonti gives the impression that there is more than a single guitar player. Gismonti’s sojourn in the Xingu region of the Amazon basin made a lasting impression. This is documented musically in tunes like “Yualapeti” and “Sapain” (Yualapeti shaman, Sapain) and in the recordings Dança das Cabeças (Dance of the Heads, 1977), Sol do Meio-Dia (Noon Sun, 1978), which he dedicated to the Xingu, and Duas Vozes (Two Voices, 1984).

The musical career of Gismonti spans five decades. The major phases are distinguished by record company, the ensemble format, and the musical collaborators. The most important ensembles are his Brazilian group Academia de Danças, including Mauro Senise (saxophone and flutes), Zeca Assumpção (bass) and Nenê (Realcino Lima Filho, drums and percussion), the duo with Naná Vasconcelos (percussion), and the trio with Charlie Haden (bass) and Jan Garbarek (saxophone). Dança das Cabecas, the first ECM record, was nominated ‘Album of the Year’ by Stereo Review and received the 1977 Großer Deutscher Schallplattenpreis

Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020), better known as Little Richard, was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He was an influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades. Described as “the architect of rock and roll“, Richard’s most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his charismatic showmanship and dynamic music, characterized by frenetic piano playing, pounding back beat and raspy shouted vocals, laid the foundation for rock and roll. Richard’s innovative emotive vocalizations and uptempo rhythmic music also played a key role in the formation of other popular music genres, including soul and funk. He influenced numerous singers and musicians across musical genres from rock to hip hop; his music helped shape rhythm and blues for generations.

“Tutti Frutti” (1955), one of Richard’s signature songs, became an instant hit, crossing over to the pop charts in both the United States and overseas in the United Kingdom. His next hit single, “Long Tall Sally” (1956), hit No. 1 on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues Best-Sellers chart, followed by a rapid succession of fifteen more in less than three years. His performances during this period resulted in integration between White Americans and African Americans in his audience. In 1962, during a five-year period in which Richard abandoned rock and roll music for born again Christianity, concert promoter Don Arden persuaded him to tour Europe. During this time, the Beatles opened for Richard on some tour dates. Richard advised the Beatles on how to perform his songs and taught the band’s member Paul McCartney his distinctive vocalizations.

Richard is cited as one of the first crossover black artists, reaching audiences of all races. His music and concerts broke the color line, drawing blacks and whites together despite attempts to sustain segregation. Many of his contemporaries, including Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, recorded covers of his works. Taken by his music and style, and personally covering four of Richard’s songs on his own two breakthrough albums in 1956, Presley told Richard in 1969 that his music was an inspiration to him and that he was “the greatest.”

Richard was honored by many institutions. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. In 2015, Richard received a Rhapsody & Rhythm Award from the National Museum of African American Music for his key role in the formation of popular music genres and helping to bring an end to the racial divide on the music charts and in concert in the mid-1950s changing American culture significantly. “Tutti Frutti” was included in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2010, which stated that his “unique vocalizing over the irresistible beat announced a new era in music.”

Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, on December 5, 1932, the third of twelve children of Leva Mae (née Stewart) and Charles “Bud” Penniman. His father was a church deacon and a brick mason, who sold bootlegged moonshine on the side and owned a nightclub called the Tip In Inn. His mother was a member of Macon’s New Hope Baptist Church.Initially, his first name was supposed to have been “Ricardo,” but an error resulted in “Richard” instead. The Penniman children were raised in a neighborhood of Macon called Pleasant Hill. In childhood, he was nicknamed “Lil’ Richard” by his family because of his small and skinny frame. A mischievous child who played pranks on neighbors, he began singing in church at a young age. Possibly as a result of complications at birth, he had a slight deformity that left one of his legs shorter than the other. This produced an unusual gait, and he was mocked for his allegedly effeminate appearance.

Alex or Aleck Miller (originally Ford, possibly December 5, 1912 – May 24, 1965), known later in his career as Sonny Boy Williamson, was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. He was an early and influential blues harp stylist who recorded successfully in the 1950s and 1960s. Miller used various names, including Rice Miller and Little Boy Blue, before calling himself Sonny Boy Williamson, which was also the name of a popular Chicago blues singer and harmonica player. To distinguish the two, Miller has been referred to as Sonny Boy Williamson II.

He first recorded with Elmore James on “Dust My Broom“. Some of his popular songs include “Don’t Start Me Talkin’“, “Help Me“, “Checkin’ Up on My Baby“, and “Bring It On Home“. He toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival and recorded with English rock musicians, including the Yardbirds, the Animals. “Help Me” became a blues standard, and many blues and rock artists have recorded his songs.

Miller’s date of birth is disputed. In a spoken word performance called “The Story of Sonny Boy Williamson” that was later included in several compilations, Miller states that he was born in Glendora, Mississippi in 1897. There are various opinions about his year of birth, five of which are 1897, 1899, 1907, 1909, and 1912. David Evans, professor of music and an ethnomusicologist at the University of Memphis, claims to have found census records that Miller was born around 1912, being seven years old on February 2, 1920, the day of the census. Miller’s gravestone in or near Tutwiler, Mississippi, set up by record company owner Lillian McMurry twelve years after his death, gives his date of birth as March 11, 1908.

He lived and worked with his sharecropper stepfather, Jim Miller, whose last name he soon adopted, and mother, Millie Ford, until the early 1930s. Beginning in the 1930s, he traveled around Mississippi and Arkansas and encountered Big Joe Williams, Elmore James and Robert Lockwood Jr., also known as Robert Junior Lockwood, who would play guitar on his later Checker Recordssides. He was also associated with Robert Johnson during this period. Miller developed his style and raffish stage persona during these years. Willie Dixon recalled seeing Lockwood and Miller playing for tips in Greenville, Mississippi, in the 1930s. He entertained audiences with novelties such as inserting one end of the harmonica into his mouth and playing with no hands. At this time he was often known as “Rice” Miller—a childhood nickname stemming from his love of rice and milk—or as “Little Boy Blue”.

W63 (G082.2+05.3) is a rarely imaged supernova located in Cygnus. The main goal of the project was to explore if there was a “hidden” shell inside the supernova. I have found many unseen (as far as I know) structures but can’t assure which of them are part of the supernova or which belongs to the OIII background nebulosity because I didn’t found any deeper image of this object and also not much literature about it.

Larry Davis (December 4, 1936 – April 19, 1994) was an American electric Texas blues and soul blues musician. He is best known for co-writing the song “Texas Flood“, later recorded to greater commercial success by Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Davis was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and was raised in England, Arkansas, and Little Rock, Arkansas. He swapped playing the drums to learn to play the bass guitar. In the mid-1950s, he had a working partnership with Fenton Robinson, and following the recommendation of Bobby Bland was given a recording contract by Duke Records. Davis had three singles released, which included “Texas Flood” and “Angels in Houston”. Thereafter, he had limited opportunity in the recording studio. He resided in St. Louis, Missouri, for a while, and played bass in Albert King‘s group. He also learned to play the guitar at this time; the guitar on Davis’s recording of “Texas Flood” was by played by Robinson.

Several single releases on the Virgo and Kent labels followed, but in 1972 a motorcycle accident temporarily paralyzed Davis’s left side. He returned a decade later with an album released by Rooster Blues, Funny Stuff, produced by Oliver Sain.He won four W. C. Handy Awards in 1982, but a decade later he was known only to blues specialists. His 1987 Pulsar LP, I Ain’t Beggin’ Nobody, was difficult even for blues enthusiasts to locate.

In 1992, Bullseye Blues issued another album, Sooner or Later, highlighting his booming vocals and guitar playing influenced by Albert King.

Davis died of cancer in April 1994, at the age of 57