mick laBriola

Raise your arms if you see an aurora. With those instructions, two nights went by with, well, clouds — mostly. On the third night of returning to same peaks, though, the sky not only cleared up but lit up with a spectacular auroral display. Arms went high in the air, patience and experience paid off, and the creative featured image was captured as a composite from three separate exposures. The setting is a summit of the Austnesfjorden fjord close to the town of Svolvear on the Lofoten islands in northern Norway. The time was early 2014. Although our Sun has just passed the solar minimum of its 11-year cycle, surface activity should pick up over the next few years with the promise of triggering more spectacular auroras on Earth.

Mary Allin Travers (November 9, 1936 – September 16, 2009) was an American singer-songwriter and member of the folk music group Peter, Paul and Mary, along with Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey. Peter, Paul and Mary was one of the most successful folk music groups of the 1960s.Travers, unlike most folk musicians of the early 1960s who were a part of the burgeoning music scene, grew up in New York City‘s Greenwich Village. A contralto, Travers released five solo albums in addition to her work with Peter, Paul and Mary.

Mary Travers was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Robert Travers and Virginia Coigney, journalists and active organizers of The Newspaper Guild, a trade union. In 1938, the family moved to Greenwich Village in New York City.

Mary attended the progressive Little Red School House, where she met musical icons like Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson. Robeson sang her lullabies. Travers left school in the 11th grade to become a member of the Song Swappers folk group.

November 9th 1955

Lynn Baker is an active saxophone performer and clinician, performing with his own Lynn Baker Quartet, the free-improvisation trio Rhythmic_Void, performing with and directing the Rocky Mountain Jazz Repertoire Orchestra, and programming the jazz series at the Cherokee Ranch and Castle Performing Arts Series. His clinician appearances at colleges, universities, high schools, and festivals have taken him across the North American continent and to Asia. He is a Origin Records recording artist with his debut release on that label scheduled for September 2010.

Lynn is an award-winning composer, performer, and educator winning the 1987 Westside Composer Award (Minneapolis, MN), the 1995 COVisions Award for Jazz Composition, the 1980 Ruth Loraine Close award in performance from the University of Oregon, and the 2005 Downbeat Magazine award for Outstanding Achievement in Jazz Education �” College Level and students and ensembles from Lamont are frequent Downbeat Student Music Award winners.

Milton Mesirow (November 9, 1899 – August 5, 1972), better known as Mezz Mezzrow, was an American jazz clarinetist and saxophonist from Chicago, Illinois. He is well known for organizing and financing historic recording sessions with Tommy Ladnier and Sidney Bechet. He also recorded a number of times with Bechet and briefly acted as manager for Louis Armstrong. Mezzrow is equally well remembered as a colorful character, as portrayed in his autobiography, Really the Blues (which takes its title from a Bechet composition), co-written with Bernard Wolfe and published in 1946.

Along with his other white counterparts, such as Eddie Condon and Frank Teschemacher, Mezzrow would visit the Sunset Café to learn from and listen to Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five. He admired Armstrong so much that after the release of “Heebie Jeebies”, he, along with Teschemacher, drove 53 miles to Indiana in order to play it for Bix Beiderbecke.

Mezzrow organized and took part in recording sessions involving black musicians in the 1930s and 1940s, including Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Frankie Newton, Tommy Ladnier and Sidney Bechet. Mezzrow’s 1938 sessions for the French jazz critic Hugues Panassie involved Bechet and Ladnier and helped spark the “New Orleans revival”.

In the mid-1940s Mezzrow started his own record label, King Jazz Records, featuring himself with groups, usually including Sidney Bechet and often including the trumpeter Oran “Hot Lips” Page. He also played on six recordings by Fats Waller.

He appeared at the 1948 Nice Jazz Festival, following which he made his home in France and organized many bands that included French musicians like Claude Luter and visiting Americans, such as Buck Clayton, Peanuts Holland, Jimmy Archey, Kansas Fields and Lionel Hampton. With ex-Basie trumpeter Buck Clayton, he made a recording of the Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” in Paris in 1953.

The pioneering Cuban percussionist Cándido Camero has died at age 99.

Camero’s grandson, Julian, told NPR member station WBGO that the Cuban conguerodied peacefully at his home in New York on Saturday morning.

Camero’s professional career encompassed the entire history of the development of Latin jazz in the US and Cuba. He was one of the first Cuban percussionists to arrive and perform in New York with US-based dance orchestras and jazz musicians in the late 1940s. His long and prolific career included collaborations with jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor, vocalist Tony Bennett , the Latin orchestras of Tito Puente and Machito, and also included a hit record during the disco era of the 1970s.

His pioneering accomplishments include being one of the first to play multiple conga drums during performances, tuning them specific notes so he could play melodies.

When Camero arrived in New York in 1947, he was already a well-known musician in Havana as a percussionist and also for playing the Cuban tres, a folkloric guitar. He spent eight years playing at the famed Tropicana nightclub, backing the biggest Cuban stars of the day and counted the young Mongo Santamaría among his bandmates.

Camero was a contemporary of the legendary Chano Pozo, another percussionist and performer who introduced Afro-Cuban drums and rhythms to jazz via Dizzy Gillespie in the late ’40s in New York. After Pozo’s death in 1948, the demand for Cuban rhythms in jazz and popular dance music was such that Camero and other Cubans contributed to some of the first instances of crossover between Latin and American musicians.

Gravity governs the movements of the cosmos. It draws flocks of galaxies together to form small groups and more massive galaxy clusters, and brings duos so close that they begin to tug at one another. This latter scenario can have extreme consequences, with members of interacting pairs of galaxies often being dramatically distorted, torn apart, or driven to smash into one another, abandoning their former identities and merging to form a single accumulation of gas, dust, and stars.

The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, IC 1727, is currently interacting with its near neighbour, NGC 672 (which is just out of frame). The pair’s interactions have triggered peculiar and intriguing phenomena within both objects — most noticeably in IC 1727. The galaxy’s structure is visibly twisted and asymmetric, and its bright nucleus has been dragged off-centre.

In interacting galaxies such as these, astronomers often see signs of intense star formation (in episodic flurries known as starbursts) and spot newly-formed star clusters. They are thought to be caused by gravity churning, redistributing, and compacting the gas and dust. In fact, astronomers have analysed the star formation within IC 1727 and NGC 672 and discovered something interesting — observations show that simultaneous bursts of star formation occurred in both galaxies some 20 to 30 and 450 to 750 million years ago. The most likely explanation for this is that the galaxies are indeed an interacting pair, approaching each other every so often and swirling up gas and dust as they pass close by.

Bonnie Lynn Raitt (born November 8, 1949) is an American blues singer, guitarist, songwriter, and activist.

During the 1970s, Raitt released a series of roots-influenced albums that incorporated elements of blues, rock, folk and country. In 1989, after several years of critical acclaim but little commercial success, she had a major hit with the album Nick of Time. The following two albums, Luck of the Draw(1991) and Longing in Their Hearts (1994), were multimillion sellers, generating several hit singles, including “Something to Talk About“, “Love Sneakin’ Up On You“, and the ballad “I Can’t Make You Love Me” (with Bruce Hornsby on piano).

Raitt has received 10 Grammy Awards. She is listed as number 50 in Rolling Stone‘s list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time” and number 89 on the magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. Australian country music artist Graeme Connors has said, “Bonnie Raitt does something with a lyric no one else can do; she bends it and twists it right into your heart.”

Minnie Julia Riperton Rudolph (November 8, 1947 – July 12, 1979) was an American singer-songwriter best known for her 1975 single “Lovin’ You” and her five-octave coloratura soprano range. She is also widely known for her use of the whistle register and has been referred to by the media as the “queen of the whistle register.”

Born in 1947, Riperton grew up in Chicago‘s Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side. As a child, she studied music, drama and dance at Chicago’s Lincoln Center. In her teen years, she sang lead vocals for the Chicago-based girl group the Gems. Her early affiliation with the Chicago-based Chess Records afforded her the opportunity to sing backing vocals for various established artists such as Etta James, Fontella Bass, Ramsey Lewis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. While at Chess, Riperton also sang lead for the experimental rock/soul group Rotary Connection, from 1967 to 1971.

On April 5, 1975, Riperton reached the apex of her career with her No. 1 single “Lovin’ You”. The single was the last release from her 1974 gold album titled Perfect Angel. In January 1976, Riperton was diagnosed with breast cancer, and in April, she underwent a radical mastectomy. By the time of diagnosis, the cancer had metastasized and she was given about six months to live. Despite the grim prognosis, she continued recording and touring. She was one of the first celebrities to go public with a breast cancer diagnosis, but she did not disclose that she was terminally ill. In 1977, she became a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. In 1978, she received the American Cancer Society’s Courage Award, which was presented to her at the White House by President Jimmy Carter. Riperton died of cancer on July 12, 1979 at age 31.

Born: November 8, 1934 (age 86 years)

A native of Carbondale, Pennsylvania, guitarist, composer, arranger, author, and educator Dale Bruning spent time living, working and recording in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York during the 1940s and 1950s. During his tenure in the United States Navy from 1953-57, he was a guitarist and arranger, and when called upon, he also played piano, bass, vibes, and percussion.

Upon his release in 1957, he studied at Temple University, declaring and graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in psychology. He took as many music classes as he could. Concurrently, he studied music and guitar with world renowned educator Dennis Sandole.

In 1961, Mr. Bruning became the leader of the house band for The Del Shields Show, a television variety program that originated from Philadelphia on WRCV, an NBC affiliate. In 1964, he and his family moved to Denver.

An accident in 1988 nearly ended Mr. Bruning’s career as a performing musician. While securing a window pane in the rubbish can, a piece of glass broke and slashed a deep cut across his left wrist. His median nerve to the fingers and the thumb tendon were badly cut. Dr. Charles Hamlin rebuilt the sheath around the nerve, enabling it to regenerate itself.

After this tragedy, his commitment to playing was fueled by his deep passion for the music and his own acts of courage every time he picked up the guitar to practice, knowing the pain would be excruciating. His valor during the slow rehabilitative process was rewarded, however, as he has become an even stronger performer than prior to the accident. Considering that he has little feeling in one finger, he amazes audiences with his ability and agility on the fingerboard.

His prowess as a performer is equaled by his talent in composing, arranging and teaching. During his 45 plus years of private teaching, he has expressed the joy of jazz to more than 1000 students, many of whom went on to become professional musicians. Among those include Bill Frisell, Mark Patterson, Bob Gillis, Tim O’Brien, Pat Donohue, and Mark Simon.

He has been featured in such prestigious magazines as 20th Century Guitar and Just Jazz Guitar, with superb CD reviews found in JazzTimes, Jazz Journal of England, Guitar Player, Cadence, Jazzscene of Oregon, The Denver Post, The Oregonian, The Omaha Herald, 20th Century Guitar, Western Austraila Guitar Socierty newsletter, Berman Foundation newsletter and Just Jazz Guitar.

He is also an entrant in The Jazz Guitar book by Maurice J. Summerfield, Ashley Mark Publishing Company, © 1998, United Kingdom.

Kenny Cox (November 8, 1940 – December 19, 2008) was a jazz pianist performing in the post bop, hard bop and bebop mediums. Cox was pianist for singer Etta Jones during the 1960s and was also a member of a quintet led by trombonist George Bohannon. By the end of the late 1960s he had formed his own Kenny Cox and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet, which recorded two albums for Blue Note Records before the end of the decade. Cox has appeared as a contributor on various albums, and has also performed live with such musicians as Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Eddie Harris, Jackie McLean, Roy Haynes, Ben Webster, Wes Montgomery, Kenny Dorham, Philly Joe Jones, Kenny Burrell, Donald Byrd, Roy Brooks, Charles McPherson, and Curtis Fuller. During the 1980s he formed the Detroit-based Guerilla Jam Band, a group which performed with Regina Carter, James Carter, Tani Tabbal, and Craig Taborn. Cox was responsible for the short-lived Strata Records.

He died in his Detroit home of lung cancer at the age of 68.

These are galaxies of the Hercules Cluster, an archipelago of island universes a mere 500 million light-years away. Also known as Abell 2151, this cluster is loaded with gas and dust rich, star-forming spiralgalaxies but has relatively few elliptical galaxies, which lack gas and dust and the associated newborn stars. The colors in this deep composite image clearly show the star forming galaxies with a blue tint and galaxies with older stellar populations with a yellowish cast. The sharp picture spans about 1/2 degree across the cluster center, corresponding to over 4 million light-years at the cluster’s estimated distance. Diffraction spikes around brighter foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy are produced by the imaging telescope’s mirror support vanes. In the cosmic vista many galaxies seem to be colliding or merging while others seem distorted – clear evidence that cluster galaxies commonly interact. In fact, the Hercules Cluster itself may be seen as the result of ongoing mergers of smaller galaxy clusters and is thought to be similar to young galaxy clusters in the much more distant, early Universe.

David Spencer Ware (November 7, 1949 – October 18, 2012) was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader.

Ware was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, grew up in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, graduated from Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School, and briefly attended the Berklee College of Music. He moved to NYC in 1973, where he participated in the loft jazz scene, and later worked as a cab driver for 14 years in order to focus on his own group concept. In the early 1980s, he returned to Scotch Plains with his wife Setsuko S. Ware.

Ware’s debut album as a leader was recorded in 1977 – together with pianist Gene Ashton (aka Cooper-Moore) and drummer Marc Edwards – and released by HatHut in 1979. He performed and recorded with the groups of pianist Cecil Taylor and drummer Andrew Cyrille in the mid-late 1970s. He formed his own quartet in 1989. The group was originally composed of Ware, pianist Matthew Shipp, bassist William Parker, and drummer Marc Edwards. While Shipp and Parker were members for the group’s entire existence, the drum chair was later occupied by Whit Dickey, Susie Ibarra, and Guillermo E. Brown.