mick laBriola

Toshiko Akiyoshi (秋吉 敏子 or 穐吉 敏子, Akiyoshi Toshiko, born 12 December 1929) is a Japanese-American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader.

She has received fourteen Grammy Award nominations and was the first woman to win Best Arranger and Composer awards in Down Beatmagazine’s annual Readers’ Poll. In 1984, she was the subject of the documentary Jazz Is My Native Language. In 1996, she published her autobiography, Life with Jazz, and in 2007 she was named an NEA Jazz Master by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.

Akiyoshi was born in Liaoyang, Manchuria to Japanese emigrants. She was the youngest of four sisters. In 1945, after World War II, Akiyoshi’s family lost their home and returned to Japan, settling in Beppu. A local record collector introduced her to jazz by playing a record of Teddy Wilsonplaying “Sweet Lorraine“. She immediately loved the sound and began to study jazz. In 1952, during a tour of Japan, pianist Oscar Petersondiscovered her playing in a club on the Ginza. Peterson was impressed and convinced record producer Norman Granz to record her. In 1953, under Granz’s direction, she recorded her first album with Peterson’s rhythm section: Herb Ellis on guitar, Ray Brown on double bass, and J. C. Heard on drums. The album was released with the title Toshiko’s Piano in the U.S. and Amazing Toshiko Akiyoshi in Japan.

This image shows the bright centre and swirling arms of the spiral galaxy NGC 6300. NGC 6300 is located in a starry patch of sky in the southern constellation of Ara (The Altar) which contains a variety of intriguing deep-sky objects. NGC 6300 has beautiful pinwheeling arms connected by a straight bar that cuts through the middle of the galaxy. While it may look like a standard spiral galaxy in visible-light images like this one, it is actually a Seyfert II galaxy. Such galaxies have unusually luminous centres that emit very energetic radiation, meaning that they are often intensely bright in part of the spectrum either side of the visible. NGC 6300 is thought to contain a massive black hole at its heart some 300 000 times more massive than the Sun. This black hole is emitting high energy X-rays as it is fed by the material that is pulled into it. This image of NGC 6300 was taken by the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (EFOSC2) on the 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT). The NTT is based at ESO’s La Silla observing site, on the outskirts of the Atacama Desert in Chile, and was inaugurated in 1989. A black and white image of NGC 6300 was released at the time of the telescope’s inauguration — one of 31 images that were the first to be released from the NTT.

Alfred McCoy Tyner (December 11, 1938 – March 6, 2020) was an American jazz pianist known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet and a long solo career. He was an NEA Jazz Master and a five-time Grammy winner. Not a player of electric keyboards and synthesizers, he was committed to acoustic instrumentation. Tyner, who was widely imitated, was one of the most recognizable and most influential pianists in jazz history.

Tyner was born in Philadelphia, as the oldest of three children of Jarvis and Beatrice (Stevenson) Tyner. He was encouraged to study piano by his mother. He began studying the piano at age 13 and within two years music had become the focal point in his life. He studied at West Philadelphia Music School and later at the Granoff School of Music. During his teens he led his own group, the Houserockers.

When he was 17, he converted to Islam through the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and changed his name to Sulieman Saud. Tyner played professionally in Philadelphia becoming part of its modern jazz scene. His neighbors in the city included musicians Richie Powell and Bud Powell. In 1960, Tyner joined The Jazztet led by Benny Golson and Art Farmer. Six months later, he joined the quartet of John Coltrane that included Elvin Jones and Steve Davis (later replaced by Art Davis, Reggie Workman, and, finally, Jimmy Garrison). He worked with the band during its extended run at the Jazz Gallery, replacing Steve Kuhn. Coltrane had known Tyner for a while growing up in Philadelphia. He recorded the pianist’s composition “The Believer” on January 10, 1958; it became the title track of Prestige’s 1964 album The Believer issued as a John Coltrane record. He played on Coltrane’s My Favorite Things (1961) for Atlantic. The band toured almost non-stop between 1961 and 1965, recording the albums Coltrane “Live” at the Village Vanguard (1962), Ballads (1963), John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (1963), Live at Birdland (1964), Crescent (1964), A Love Supreme (1964), and The John Coltrane Quartet Plays (1965), all for Impulse! Records.

Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984), better known as Big Mama Thornton, was an American rhythm-and-blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller’s “Hound Dog“, in 1952, which became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953 and selling almost two million copies. Thornton’s other recordings included the original version of “Ball and Chain“, which she wrote.

Thornton’s birth certificate states that she was born in Ariton, Alabama, but in an interview with Chris Strachwitz she claimed Montgomery, Alabamaas her birthplace, probably because Montgomery was better known than Ariton. She was introduced to music in a Baptist church, where her father was a minister and her mother a singer. She and her six siblings began to sing at early ages. Her mother died young, and Willie Mae left school and got a job washing and cleaning spittoons in a local tavern. In 1940 she left home and, with the help of Diamond Teeth Mary, joined Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Revue and was soon billed as the “New Bessie Smith“. Her musical education started in the church but continued through her observation of the rhythm-and-blues singers Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie, whom she deeply admired.

Dámaso Pérez Prado (December 11, 1916 – September 14, 1989) was a Cuban bandleader, pianist, composer and arranger who popularized the mambo in the 1950s. His big band adaptation of the danzón-mambo proved to be a worldwide success with hits such as “Mambo No. 5“, earning him the nickname “King of the Mambo”. In 1955, Prado and his orchestra topped the charts in the US and UK with a mambo cover of Louiguy‘s “Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)“. He frequently made brief appearances in films, primarily of the rumberas genre, and his music was featured in films such as La Dolce Vita.

Pérez Prado began his career as pianist and arranger for the Sonora Matancera, an internationally successful dance music ensemble from his hometown of Matanzas. He later established his own group and made several recordings in Havana in 1946, including “Trompetiana”, a self-penned mambo and one of the first examples arranged for big band. He then moved to Mexico where the developed this particular genre in multiple forms, including bolero-mambo (with María Luisa Landín), guaracha-mambo (with Benny Moré) and two forms of instrumental mambo he created: mambo batiri and mambo kaen. The success of his 1949 recordings landed him a contract with RCA Victor in the US, which led to a prolific career in the 1950s. His number 1 hit “Cherry Pink” was followed by other charting singles, such as a cover of “Guaglione” and his own “Patricia“, both released in 1958. In the 1960s, Pérez Prado’s popularity waned with the advent of other Latin dance rhythms such as pachanga and, later, boogaloo. Despite several innovative albums and a new form of mambo he called “dengue”, Pérez Prado moved back to Mexico in the 1970s, where became a naturalized citizen in 1980. He died there in 1989. His son, Pérez Jr., continues to direct the Pérez Prado Orchestra in Mexico City to this day.

Carlos Gardel (born Charles Romuald Gardès; 11 December 1890 – 24 June 1935) was a French Argentinesinger, songwriter, composer and actor, and the most prominent figure in the history of tango. He was one of the most influential interpreters of world popular music in the first half of the 20th century. He was notable for his baritone voice and the dramatic phrasing of his lyrics. Together with lyricist and long-time collaborator Alfredo Le Pera, Gardel wrote several classic tangos.

Gardel died in an airplane crash at the height of his career, becoming an archetypal tragic hero mourned throughout Latin America. For many, Gardel embodies the soul of the tango style. He is commonly referred to as “Carlitos”, “El Zorzal” (“The Song thrush“), “The King of Tango”, “El Mago” (The Wizard), “El Morocho del Abasto” (The Brunette boy from Abasto), and ironically “El Mudo” (The Mute).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uauAL0q26sI

In flamenco a tango (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtaŋɡo]) is one of the flamenco palos closely related in form and feeling to the rumba flamenca. It is often performed as a finale to a flamenco tiento. Its compás and llamada are the same as that of the farruca and share the farruca’s lively nature. However, the tango is normally performed in the A Phrygian mode. In some English sources the flamenco tango is written with an -s; “the tangos is…”

The flamenco tango is distinct from the flamenco rumba primarily through the guitar playing. In Rumba the guitar flows more freely, whereas in Tangos the accents on beats 2, 3 & 4 are marked clearly with heavy strumming.

Tangos is only vaguely related to Argentine tango, and objectively they only share compás binario or double stroke rhythm. The fact that Argentine tango is one of the first couple dances in America has led historians to believe that both could be based in a minuet-style European dance, therefore sharing a common ancestor, while those who compare the present day forms do not see them as related.

Intricate looping filaments in this detailed image of supernova remnant Simeis 147. Also cataloged as Sharpless 2-240 it goes by the popular nickname, the Spaghetti Nebula.Seen toward the boundary of the constellations Taurus and Auriga, it covers nearly 3 degrees or 6 full moons on the sky. That’s about 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud’s estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. This composite includes image data taken through narrow-band filters where reddish emission from ionized hydrogen atoms and doubly ionized oxygen atoms in faint blue-green hues trace the shocked, glowing gas. The supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years, meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago. But the expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star’s core.

Pops Mohamed (born Ismail Mohamed-Jan) is a South African multi-instrumentalist, jazz musician and producer.

Born in Benoni, Gauteng Pops Mohamed’s career in music was the logical outcome of an early exposure at Dorkay House to the likes of Abdullah Ibrahim and Kippie Moeketsi. He started his first band The Valiants, at 14. Known by fans as the Minister of Music, he plays a wide variety of instruments: African mouth bow, bird whistle, berimbau, didgeridoo, guitar, keyboard, kora, and the thumb piano. He is also known for his wide range of musical styles which include kwela, pop, and soul. He produced Finding One’s Self, the late Moses Taiwa Molelekwa‘s award-winning album.

Pops has also performed regularly with and sits on the board of the Johannesburg Youth Orchestra Company

Eddie Jones (December 10, 1926 – February 7, 1959), better known as Guitar Slim, was a New Orleans blues guitarist in the 1940s and 1950s, best known for the million-selling song “The Things That I Used to Do“, produced by Johnny Vincent for Specialty Records. It is listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Slim had a major impact on rock and roll and experimented with distorted overtones on the electric guitar a full decade before Jimi Hendrix. Jones was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. His mother died when he was five, and he was raised by his grandmother. In his teen years he worked in cotton fields and spent his free time at juke joints, where he started sitting in as a singer or dancer; he was good enough as a dancer that he was nicknamed “Limber Leg”.

After returning from military service during World War II, he started playing in clubs around New Orleans, Louisiana. Bandleader Willie D. Warrenintroduced him to the guitar. He was particularly influenced by T-Bone Walker and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. About 1950 he adopted the stage name Guitar Slim and became known for his wild stage act. He wore bright-colored suits and dyed his hair to match them. He had an assistant who followed him around the audience with up to 350 feet of cord between his guitar and his amplifier, and occasionally rode on his assistant’s shoulders or even took his guitar outside the club, bringing traffic to a stop. His sound was just as unusual—he played his guitar with distortion more than a decade before rock guitarists did, and his gospel-influenced vocals were easily identifiable.

Melbourne Robert “Bob” Cranshaw (December 3, 1932 – November 2, 2016) was an American jazz bassist. His career spanned the heyday of Blue Note Records to his recent involvement with the Musicians Union. He is perhaps best known for his long association with Sonny Rollins. Cranshaw performed in Rollins’s working band on and off for over five decades, starting with a live appearance at the 1959 Playboy jazz festival in Chicago and on record with the 1962 album The Bridge.

Cranshaw died at the age of 83 on November 2, 2016 in Manhattan, New York from Stage IV cancer.

Ray Willis Nance (December 10, 1913, in Chicago – January 28, 1976, in New York City) was a jazz trumpeter, violinist and singer. He is best remembered for his long association with Duke Ellington and his orchestra.

Nance was the leader of his own band in Chicago from 1932 to 1937. Then, he worked with Earl Hines from 1937 to 1939; and from 1939 to 1940 he worked with Horace Henderson. Ellington hired Nance to replace trumpeter Cootie Williams, who had joined Benny Goodman, in 1940. Nance’s first recorded performance with Ellington was at the Fargo, North Dakota ballroom dance. Shortly after joining the band, Nance was given the trumpet solo on the earliest recorded version of “Take the “A” Train“, which became the Ellington theme. Nance’s “A Train” solo is one of the most copied and admired trumpet solos in jazz history. Indeed, when Cootie Williams returned to the band more than twenty years later, he would play Nance’s solo on “A Train” almost exactly as the original.

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

An orange glow radiates from the centre of NGC 1792, the heart of this stellar forge. Captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, this intimate view of NGC 1792 gives us some insight into this galactic powerhouse. The vast swathes of tell-tale blue seen throughout the galaxy indicate areas that are full of young, hot stars, and it is in the shades of orange, seen nearer the centre, that the older, cooler stars reside. Nestled in the constellation of Columba (The Dove), NGC 1792 is both a spiral galaxy, and a starburst galaxy. Within starburst galaxies, stars are forming at comparatively exorbitant rates. The rate of star formation can be more than 10 times faster in a starburst galaxy than in the Milky Way. When galaxies have a large resevoir of has, like NGC 1792, these short lived starburst phases can be sparked by galactic events such as mergers and tidal interactions. One might think that these starbust galaxies would easily consume all of their gas in our large forming event. However, supernova explosions and intense stellar winds produced in these powerful starbusts can inject energy into the gas and disperse it. This halts the star formation before it can completely deplete the galaxy of all its fuel. Scientists are actively working to understanding this complex interplay between the dynamic that drive and quench these fierce bursts of star formation.