mick laBriola

Pat Martino, a jazz guitarist revered for the fluid precision and blistering speed of his playing — both before and after he was forced to relearn the instrument following a mid-career brain aneurysm — died on Monday. He was 77 years old.

His death was announced on Facebook by his longtime manager, Joseph Donofrio. Martino, born Patrick Azzara, died after a long illness in the South Philadelphia row home formerly owned by his parents, where he moved in 1980 after undergoing neurosurgery that saved his life — at the near-total cost of his memory. The guitarist had been suffering from a chronic respiratory disorder since 2018, breathing with oxygen support and unable to play since a tour of Italy that November. He is survived by his wife, Ayako.

Martino’s career spanned six decades and a variety of styles, from his formative years performing in organ groups to the Wes Montgomery-influenced hard bop of his early recordings, spiritual explorations in the late 60s ceding to the blazing, virtuosic fusion of 1970s classics like Joyous Lake.

Regardless of the setting, Martino played the guitar with an intensity of focus and impeccable clarity at even the most dizzying pace. Always retaining the soul and buoyant groove that he honed at the side of master jazz organists like Charles Earland, Don Patterson and Jack McDuff, Martino melded that profound feel with a rock-fueled ferocity born of a questing spirit rather than aggression.

Herbert Jansch (3 November 1943 – 5 October 2011) was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s as an acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter. He recorded at least 25 albums and toured extensively from the 1960s to the 21st century.

Jansch was a leading figure in the 1960s British folk revival, touring folk clubs and recording several solo albums, as well as collaborating with other musicians such as John Renbourn and Anne Briggs. In 1968, he co-founded the band Pentangle, touring and recording with them until their break-up in 1972. He then took a few years’ break from music, returning in the late 1970s to work on a series of projects with other musicians. He joined a reformed Pentangle in the early 1980s and remained with them as they evolved through various changes of personnel until 1995. Until his death, Jansch continued to work as a solo artist.

Jansch’s work influenced many artists, especially Jimmy Page, Mike Oldfield, Paul Simon, Pete Hawkes, Nick Drake, Donovan, and Neil Young.

Jansch received two Lifetime Achievement Awards at the BBC Folk Awards: one, in 2001, for his solo achievements and the other, in 2007, as a member of Pentangle.

Joe McPhee (born November 3, 1939) is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist born in Miami, Florida, a player of tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, the trumpet, flugelhorn and valve trombone. McPhee grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is most notable for his free jazz work done from the late 1960s to the present day.

McPhee was born in Miami, Florida, on November 3, 1939. He began playing trumpet when he was eight, before learning other instruments. He played in various high school and then military bands before starting his recording career. His first recording came in 1967, when he appeared on the Clifford Thornton album entitled Freedom and Unity. McPhee taught himself saxophone at the age of 32 after experiencing the music of John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and Ornette Coleman. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, McPhee lectured on jazz music at Vassar College.

In 1975, Werner Uehlinger started the Swiss label Hathut Records with the specific intent of showcasing McPhee’s music. In the 1980s, McPhee met Pauline Oliveros, began studying her musical theories, and worked with her Deep Listening Band. He has not yet signed with any major label in his native United States, and was possibly better known throughout Europe than his native country until the 1990s. His 1996 album As Serious As Your Life, which takes its title from the jazz book by Val Wilmer, is “arguably the finest of his solo recordings”, according to the AllMusic review.

Henry Grimes (November 3, 1935 – April 15, 2020) was an American jazz double bassist and violinist.

After more than a decade of activity and performance, notably as a leading bassist in free jazz, Grimes completely disappeared from the music scene by 1970. Grimes was often presumed to have died, but he was discovered in 2002 and returned to performing.

Henry Alonzo Grimes was born in Philadelphia, to parents who both had been musicians in their youth. He took up the violin at the age of 12, then began playing tuba, English horn, percussion, finally switching to the double bass at Mastbaum Technical High School. He furthered his musical studies at Juilliard and established a reputation as a versatile bassist by the mid-1950s. He recorded or performed with saxophonists Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, pianist Thelonious Monk, singer Anita O’Day, clarinetist Benny Goodman and many others.

Ruma Guha Thakurta (3 November 1934 – 3 June 2019) was an Indian actress and singer primarily associated with Bengali language films. She founded Calcutta Youth Choir in 1958.

Guha Thakurta was born on 3 November 1934 to Satyen Ghosh (Monty Ghosh) and singer Sati Devi. Guha Thakurta’s family was culturally inclined to Brahmo Samaj, a societal component of Brahmoism. Sati was a trained vocalist and elder sister to Bijoya Ray, wife of Satyajit Ray. Guha Thakurta began as a dancer. Later, she went to Almora Academy of Uday Shankar at Lahore to study dance. She started training in music at Swarabitan in Kolkata, which had been established by her parents. In later years, she studied under Abdul Rehman Khan of Patiala gharana, the Ustad of Nirmla Devi and Lakshmi Shankar in Bombay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSgNwiL98y4

When a distant star explodes in a supernova, we’re lucky if we see it even once. In the case of AT 2016jka (“SN Requiem”), because the exploding star happened to be lined up behind the center of a galaxy cluster (MACS J0138 in this case), a comparison of Hubble Space Telescope images demonstrate that we saw it three times. These three supernova images are highlighted in circles near the bottom of the left frame taken in 2016. On the right frame, taken in 2019, the circles are empty because all three images of the single supernova had faded. Computer modeling of the cluster lens, however, indicates that a fourth image of the same supernova should eventually appear in the upper circle on the right image. But when? The best models predict this will happen in 2037, but this date is uncertain by about two years because of ambiguities in the mass distribution of the cluster lens and the brightness history of the stellar explosion. With refined predictions and vigilant monitoring, Earthlingsliving 16 years from now may be able to catch this fourth image — and perhaps learn more about both galaxy clusters and supernovas at once.

Philip Wells Woods (November 2, 1931 – September 29, 2015) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, bandleader, and composer.

Woods was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. He studied music with Lennie Tristano, who influenced him greatly, at the Manhattan School of Music and at the Juilliard School. His friend, Joe Lopes, coached him on clarinet as there was no saxophone major at Juilliard at the time. Although he did not copy Charlie “Bird” Parker, he was known as the New Bird, a nickname also given to other alto saxophone players such as Sonny Stitt and Cannonball Adderley.

In the 1950s, Woods began to lead his own bands. Quincy Jones invited him to accompany Dizzy Gillespie on a world tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department. A few years later he toured Europe with Jones, and in 1962 he toured Russia with Benny Goodman.

After moving to France in 1968, Woods led the European Rhythm Machine, a group which tended toward avant-garde jazz. He returned to the United States in 1972 and, after an unsuccessful attempt to establish an electronic group, he formed a quintet which was still performing, with some changes of personnel, in 2004. As his theme, Woods used a piece titled “How’s Your Mama?”

Roland Bernard “Bunny” Berigan (November 2, 1908 – June 2, 1942) was an American jazz trumpeter and bandleader who rose to fame during the swing era. His career and influence were shortened by alcoholism, and ended with his early demise at the age of 33 from cirrhosis. Although he composed some jazz instrumentals such as “Chicken and Waffles” and “Blues”, Berigan was best known for his virtuoso jazz trumpeting. His 1937 classic recording “I Can’t Get Started” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975.

Berigan was born in Hilbert, Wisconsin, the son of William Patrick Berigan and Mary Catherine (Mayme) Schlitzberg, and raised in Fox Lake.Having learned the violin and trumpet, Berigan started his career playing with local bands as a teenager, including the University of Wisconsin’s jazz ensemble (although he never actually went to college). After first trying out for the Hal Kemp Orchestra and being rejected he joined the band in late 1929. His first recorded trumpet solos were with the orchestra, which toured England and a few other European countries in 1930. He also appeared as featured soloist with bands fronted by Rudy Vallee, Tommy Dorsey, Abe Lyman, Paul Whiteman and Benny Goodman.

Beryl Eugenia McBurnie (2 November 1913 – 30 March 2000) was a Trinidadian dancer. She established the Little Carib Theatre, and promoted the culture and arts of Trinidad and Tobago as her life’s work. She helped to promote the cultural legitimacy of Trinidad and Tobago that would ultimately arm its people to handle independence psychologically and healthily. McBurnie dedicated her life to dance, becoming one of the greatest influences on modern Trinidadian pop culture.

At the age of eight years she was invited to recite the “Sycamore Tree” for a charity concert in the district. Soon after that she set about gathering children from the neighbourhood to form a group, which would present concerts. The first concert planned did not take place, but she and her friends tried again, borrowing chairs from neighbours. This time the performance was well appreciated and this successful venture encouraged her to continue.

Beryl McBurnie began dancing as a child, performing regularly in dances and plays at Tranquility Girls’ School, Port-of-Spain. In her youth she performed Scottish reels, jigs, and other British folk dances that the teacher instructed. Though she appreciated their beauty, she yearned for more. In her teens, she decided to focus on promoting “the emotions of the folk, and which in some cases gave an insight into the history and the way of life of the ordinary people.