mick laBriola

Located about 15 million light-years away towards the Hydra (the sea serpent) constellation, Messier 83 is a nearby face-on barred spiral with a classic grand design form. It is the main member of a small galactic group including NGC 5253 and about 9 dwarf galaxies. Messier 83 stretches over 40,000 light-years, making it roughly 2.5 times smaller than our own Milky Way. However, in some respects, Messier 83 is quite similar to our own galaxy. Both the Milky Way and Messier 83 possess a bar across their galactic nucleus, the dense spherical conglomeration of stars seen at the centre of the galaxies.

Messier 83 has been a prolific producer of supernovae, with six observed in the past century. This is indicative of an exceptionally high rate of star formation coinciding with its classification as a starburst galaxy. Despite its symmetric appearance, the central 1,000 light-years of the galaxy shows an unusually high level of complexity, containing both a double nucleus and a double circumnuclear starburst ring. The nature of the double nucleus is uncertain but the off centre nucleus could be a remnant core of a small galaxy that merged with Messier 83 in the past. The star clusters in the nuclear starburst rings are mostly young stars between 5 and 10 million years old. This image is based on data acquired with the 1.5-metre Danish telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, through three filters (B, V, R).

Khadja Nin (born 27 June 1959) is a Burundian singer and musician.

Nin was born in Burundi, the youngest of a family of eight. Her father was a diplomat. She studied music at an early age like most of her brothers and sisters. With her exceptional singing voice, at the age of seven she became one of the lead vocalists in the Bujumbura choir and performed in the local cathedral. She left Burundi for Zaire in 1975 and married in 1978. In 1980 she emigrated to Belgium with her two-year-old son. In 1985 she obtained a contract with BMG. Her second album, a 1994 release entitled Ya Pili, was critically acclaimed.

Her breakthrough came in 1996 with her widely popular album Sambolera, which was sung in Swahili, Kirundi, and French. In 1997 she performed the song “Sailing” in a duet with Montserrat Caballé on the album Friends For Life. She successfully used a blend between African rhythms and modern pop to create her own unique brand of music. One of her most popular songs is Sina Mali, Sina Deni, a translated cover version of Stevie Wonder‘s song Free.

The first album was released in 1992, sung in Swahili. But it is best known in France in 1995 with the tube Sambolera mali sound, a title of the second album, Ya Pili (The second). The third album is a compilation of old and new titles. Jeanne Moreau makes the clip illustrating her song Mama, where she talks about her mother, on her fourth album Ya … . The texts of this album are in Swahili or Kirundi (for the chorus of the title Mama). The album also includes a cover of a piece by Gabonese musician Pierre Akendengué, Africa Obota, and a title of Stevie Wonder, Free that she renamed Sina mali, sina deni (I am neither rich nor indebted). Another piece pays tribute to Nelson Mandela, and a song calls for easing the embargo imposed on Burundi.

In January 2000, she sang at AccorHotels Arena (at the time Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy) with Sting and Cheb Mami. She remarries in 2006 with the Belgian car driver Jacky Ickx, and they settle in Monaco. In this marriage, she has had a son who now lives in Belgium.

In 2018, she was a jury member at the Cannes Film Festival, under the presidency of Cate Blanchett, alongside actresses Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart, director Ava DuVernay, actor Chang Chen and directors Robert Guédiguian, Denis Villeneuve and Andrey Zvyagintsev.

George Braith (born George Timothy Braithwaite on June 26, 1939) is a soul-jazz saxophonist from New York. Braith is known for playing multiple horns at once, a technique pioneered by Roland Kirk. Braith is credited with the invention of the Braithophone, two different horns (straight alto and soprano) mended together by extensions, valves and connections.

Braith is featured in a mosaic in the 72nd street station of the Second Avenue Subway in the New York City Subway system.

Of Braith’s album Musart Thom Jurek at AllMusic wrote, “Musart is his masterpiece; it is one of the most diverse yet refined albums to come out of the ’60s, and has few peers even today.”

Johnny “Big Moose” Walker (June 27, 1927 – November 27, 1999) was an American Chicago blues and electric blues pianist and organist. He worked with many blues musicians, including Ike Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Lowell Fulson, Choker Campbell, Elmore James, Earl Hooker, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Dawkins and Son Seals.^[2]

Walker was primarily a piano player but was also proficient on the electronic organ and the bass guitar (he played the bass guitar when backing Muddy Waters). He recorded solo albums and accompanied other musicians in concert and on recordings.

John Mayon Walker was born in the unincorporated community of Stoneville, Mississippi, partly of Native American ancestry. He acquired his best-known stage name in his childhood in Greenville, Mississippi, derived from his long, flowing hair. He learned to play several instruments, including the church organ, guitar, vibraphone and tuba.

He began his musical career as a pianist, in 1947, touring with various blues bands and backing such notable artists as Ike Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Elmore James, Lowell Fulson and Choker Campbell. Walker served in the United States Army from 1952 to 1955, serving during the Korean War. In 1955, billed as Moose John, Ultra Records released the single, “Talkin’ ‘Bout Me”. His own recordings, released under various names, were unsuccessful, but Walker started working more consistently in the mid-1950s, notably backing Earl Hooker and Elmore James.Walker moved to Chicago in the late 1950s and over the next decade accompanied Sunnyland Slim, Otis Rush, Muddy Waters (for whom Walker played bass guitar), Ricky Allen, Little Johnny Jones, and Howlin’ Wolf.^[4] In 1960, he accompanied Junior Wells on his best-known recording, “Messin’ with the Kid“. The following year Walker played on James’s recordings of “Look on Yonder Wall” and “Shake Your Moneymaker“. In 1962, Walker played on Waters’s recording of “You Shook Me“. During the 1960s, a couple of obscure Chicago-based record labels, Age and The Blues, released Walker’s solo singles.

St. Elmo Sylvester Hope (June 27, 1923 – May 19, 1967) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, chiefly in the bebop and hard bopgenres. He grew up playing and listening to jazz and classical music with Bud Powell, and both were close friends of another influential pianist, Thelonious Monk.

Hope survived being shot by police as a youth to become a New York-based musician who recorded with several emerging stars in the early to mid-1950s, including trumpeter Clifford Brown, and saxophonists John Coltrane, Lou Donaldson, Jackie McLean, and Sonny Rollins. A long-term heroin user, Hope had his license to perform in New York’s clubs withdrawn after a drug conviction, so he moved to Los Angeles in 1957. He was not happy during his four years on the West Coast, but had some successful collaborations there, including with saxophonist Harold Land.

More recordings as leader ensued following Hope’s return to New York, but they did little to gain him more public or critical attention. Further drug and health problems reduced the frequency of his public performances, which ended a year before his death, at the age of 43. He remains little known, despite, or because of, the individuality of his playing and composing, which were complex and stressed subtlety and variation rather than the virtuosity predominant in bebop.

Elmo Hope was born on June 27, 1923, in New York City. His parents, Simon and Gertrude Hope, were immigrants from the Caribbean, and had several children. Elmo began playing the piano aged seven. He had classical music lessons as a child, and won solo piano recital contests from 1938. Fellow pianist Bud Powell was a childhood friend; together, they played and listened to jazz and classical music. Hope attended Benjamin Franklin High School, which was known for its music program. He developed an excellent understanding of harmony, and composed jazz and classical pieces at school.

The galaxy known as NGC 5907 stretches wide across this image. Appearing as an elongated line of stars and dark dust, the galaxy is categorized as a spiral galaxy just like our own Milky Way. In this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, we don’t see the beautiful spiral arms because we are viewing it edge-on, like looking at the rim of a plate. It is for this reason that NGC 5907 is also known as the Knife Edge Galaxy.

The Knife Edge Galaxy is about 50 million light-years from Earth, lying in the northern constellation of Draco. Although not visible in this image, ghostly streams of stars on large arching loops extend into space, circling around the galaxy; they are believed to be remnants of a small dwarf galaxy, torn apart by the Knife Edge Galaxy and merged with it over four billion years ago.

Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira (born 26 June 1942), known professionally as Gilberto Gil (Brazilian Portuguese: [ʒiwˈbɛʁtu ˈʒiw]), is a Brazilian singer, guitarist, and songwriter, known for both his musical innovation and political activism. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Brazil’s Minister of Culture in the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Gil’s musical style incorporates an eclectic range of influences, including rock, Brazilian genres including samba, African music, and reggae.

Gil started to play music as a child and was a teenager when he joined his first band. He began his career as a bossa nova musician and grew to write songs that reflected a focus on political awareness and social activism. He was a key figure in the Música popular brasileira and tropicália movements of the 1960s, alongside artists such as longtime collaborator Caetano Veloso. The Brazilian military regime that took power in 1964 saw both Gil and Veloso as a threat, and the two were held for nine months in 1969 before they were told to leave the country. Gil moved to London, but returned to Bahia in 1972 and continued his musical career, as well as working as a politician and environmental advocate.

Reginald “Reggie” Workman (born June 26, 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American avant-garde jazz and hard bop double bassist, recognized for his work with both John Coltrane and Art Blakey.

Early in his career, Workman worked in jazz groups led by Gigi Gryce, Donald Byrd, Duke Jordan and Booker Little. In 1961, Workman joined the John Coltrane Quartet, replacing Steve Davis. He was present for the saxophonist’s Live at the Village Vanguard sessions, and also recorded with a second bassist (Art Davis) on the 1961 album, Olé Coltrane. Workman left Coltrane’s group at the end of the year, following a European tour.

In 1962, Workman joined Art Blakey‘s Jazz Messengers (replacing long-time Blakey bassist Jymie Merritt), and worked alongside Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, and Cedar Walton for most of this period. Workman left Blakey’s group in 1964.

Workman also played with James Moody, Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, Herbie Mann and Thelonious Monk. He has recorded with Archie Shepp, Lee Morgan and David Murray.^[1] Workman, with pianist Tommy Flanagan and drummer Joe Chambers, formed The Super Jazz Trio in 1978.

He is currently a professor at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City, and is a member of the group, Trio 3, with Oliver Lake and Andrew Cyrille.

Workman has been a resident of Montclair, New Jersey

Big Bill Broonzy (born Lee Conley Bradley, June 26, 1903 – August 14, 1958) was an American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played country blues to mostly African-American audiences. Through the 1930s and 1940s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working-class African-American audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.

Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs. As a blues composer, he was unique in writing songs that reflected his rural-to-urban experiences.

Born Lee Conley Bradley, he was one of the seventeen children of Frank Broonzy (Bradley) and Mittie Belcher. The date and place of his birth are disputed. Broonzy claimed to have been born in Scott, Mississippi, but a body of emerging research compiled by the blues historian Robert Reisman suggests that he was born in Jefferson County, Arkansas. Broonzy claimed he was born in 1893, and many sources report that year, but family records discovered after his death suggested that the year was 1903.

Alegrías (Spanish pronunciation: [aleˈɣɾi.as]) is a flamenco palo or musical form, which has a rhythm consisting of 12 beats. It is similar to Soleares. Its beat emphasis is as follows: 1 2 [3] 4 5 [6] 7 [8]9 [10] 11 [12]. Alegrías originated in Cádiz. Alegrías belongs to the group of palos called Cantiñas and it is usually played in a lively rhythm (120-170 beats per minute). The livelier speeds are chosen for dancing, while quieter rhythms are preferred for the song alone.

One of the structurally strictest forms of flamenco, a traditional dance in alegrías must contain each of the following sections: a salida (entrance), paseo (walkaround), silencio (similar to an adagio in ballet), castellana (upbeat section) zapateado (Literally “a tap of the foot”) and bulerías. This structure though, is not followed when alegrías are sung as a standalone song (with no dancing). In that case, the stanzas are combined freely, sometimes together with other types of cantiñas.

Recommended listenings for this palo include most singers from Cádiz, like Chano Lobato, La Perla de Cádiz, Aurelio Sellé, but also general singers like Manolo Caracol or La Niña de los Peines.

Also, you can listen “Mar Amargo” from Camarón and “La Tarde es Caramelo” from Vicente Amigo.

It is one of the cante chico forms of flamenco. The word Alegrías literally means “joys.”

NGC 317 is a pair of interacting galaxies, consisting of a lenticular galaxy (PGC 3442) and a spiral galaxy (PGC 3345), in the constellation Andromeda. It was discovered on October 1, 1885 by Lewis Swift.

Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1945) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and children’s author. She first rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records; her 13 Top 40 U.S. hits include “Anticipation” (No. 13), “You Belong To Me” (No. 6), “Coming Around Again” (No. 18), and her four Gold certified singles “Jesse” (No. 11), “Mockingbird” (No. 5, a duet with James Taylor), “You’re So Vain” (No. 1), and “Nobody Does It Better” (No. 2) from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.

After a brief stint with her sister Lucy Simon as duo group the Simon Sisters, she found great success as a solo artist with her 1971 self-titled debut album Carly Simon, which won her the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and spawned her first Top 10 single, “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” (No. 10). Her second album, Anticipation, followed later that year and became an even greater success, earning Simon another Grammy nomination and later being certified Gold by the RIAA. She achieved international fame the following year with the release of her third album, No Secrets, which sat firmly at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for five weeks, was certified Platinum, and spawned the worldwide hit “You’re So Vain”, for which she received three Grammy nominations, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year. With her 1988 hit “Let the River Run“, from the film Working Girl, she became the first artist to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for a song composed and written, as well as performed, entirely by a single artist.

Over the course of her career, Simon has amassed 24 Billboard Hot 100 charting singles, 28 Billboard Adult Contemporary charting singles, and won 2 Grammy Awards, from 14 nominations. AllMusic called her “one of the quintessential singer-songwriters of the ’70s”. She has a contralto vocal range, and has cited Odetta as a significant influence. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994. In 1995 and 1998, respectively, she received the Boston Music Awards Lifetime Achievement and a Berklee College of Music Honorary Doctor of Music Degree. She was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for “You’re So Vain” in 2004 and awarded the ASCAP Founders Award in 2012.

Simon was born June 25, 1945, in the Bronx borough of New York City. Her father, Richard L. Simon, was the co-founder of Simon & Schuster and a classical pianist who often played Frédéric Chopin and Ludwig van Beethoven at home. Her mother was Andrea Heinemann Simon (née Heinemann), a civil rights activist and singer. Her father was from a German-Jewish family, while her maternal grandfather Friedrich was of German descent; her maternal grandmother, Ofelia Oliete, known as “Chibie”, was a Catholic originally from Cuba, and was of Pardo heritage, a freed-slave descendant. Ofelia was raised primarily in England by nuns until the age of sixteen. A 2017 episode of PBS show Finding Your Roots tested Simon’s DNA, which included 10% African and 2% Native American, likely via her maternal grandmother.

Joe Chambers (born June 25, 1942) in Chester, Pennsylvania is an American jazz drummer, pianist, vibraphonist and composer. He attended the Philadelphia Conservatory for one year. In the 1960s and 1970s Chambers gigged with many high-profile artists such as Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, and Chick Corea. During this period, his compositions appeared on some of the albums in which he made guest appearances, such as those with Freddie Hubbard and Bobby Hutcherson. He has released eight albums as a bandleader and been a member of several incarnations of Max Roach‘s M’Boom percussion ensemble.

He has also taught, including at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City, where he leads the Outlaw Band. In 2008, he was hired to be the Thomas S. Kenan Distinguished Professor of Jazz in the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Clifton Chenier (June 25, 1925 – December 12, 1987), a Louisiana French-speaking native of Leonville ^[3], Louisiana, near Opelousas, was an eminent performer and recording artist of zydeco, which arose from Cajun and Creole music, with R&B, jazz, and blues influences. He played the accordion and won a Grammy Award in 1983. He was a recipient of a 1984 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. He was inducted posthumously into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1989, and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2011. In 2014, he was a recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

He was known as the King of Zydeco and also billed as the King of the South.

Chenier began his recording career in 1954, when he signed with Elko Records and released Cliston’s Blues [sic], a regional success. In 1955 he signed with Specialty Records and garnered his first national hit with his label debut “Ay-Tete Fi” (Hey, Little Girl) (a cover of Professor Longhair‘s song). The national success of the release led to numerous tours with popular rhythm and blues performers such as Ray Charles, Etta James, and Lowell Fulson. He also toured in the early days with Clarence Garlow, billed as the Two Crazy Frenchmen. Chenier was signed with Chess Records in Chicago, followed by the Arhoolie label.

Johnny Henry Smith II (June 25, 1922 – June 11, 2013) was an American cool jazz and mainstream jazz guitarist. He wrote “Walk, Don’t Run” in 1954. In 1984, Smith was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.

During the Great Depression, Smith’s family moved from Birmingham, Alabama, United States, where Smith was born, through several cities, ending up in Portland, Maine.

Smith taught himself to play guitar in pawnshops, which let him play in exchange for keeping the guitars in tune. At thirteen years of age he was teaching others to play the guitar. One of Smith’s students bought a new guitar and gave him his old guitar, which became the first guitar Smith owned.

Smith joined Uncle Lem and the Mountain Boys, a local hillbilly band that travelled around Maine, performing at dances, fairs, and similar venues. Smith earned four dollars a night. He dropped out of high school to accommodate this enterprise.

Having become increasingly interested in the jazz bands that he heard on the radio, Smith gradually moved away from country music towards playing more jazz. He left The Mountain Boys when he was eighteen years old to join a variety trio called the Airport Boys.