mick laBriola

Le Sony’r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993 Birmingham, AL), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, “cosmic” philosophy, prolific output, and theatrical performances. For much of his career, Ra led The Arkestra, an ensemble with an ever-changing name and flexible line-up.

Born and raised in Alabama, Blount became involved in the Chicago jazz scene during the late 1940s. He soon abandoned his birth name, taking the name Le Sony’r Ra, shortened to Sun Ra (after Ra, the Egyptian god of the Sun). Claiming to be an alien from Saturn on a mission to preach peace, he developed a mythical persona and an idiosyncratic credo that made him a pioneer of Afrofuturism. Throughout his life he denied ties to his prior identity saying, “Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym.” His widely eclectic and avant-garde music echoed the entire history of jazz, from ragtime and early New Orleans hot jazz, to swing music, bebop, free jazz and fusion. His compositions ranged from keyboard solos to works for big bands of over 30 musicians, along with electronic excursions, songs, chants, percussion pieces, and anthems.

From the mid-1950s until his death, Ra led the musical collective The Arkestra, which featured artists such as Marshall Allen, John Gilmore and June Tyson throughout its various iterations. Its performances often included dancers and musicians dressed in elaborate, futuristic costumes inspired by ancient Egyptianattire and the Space Age. Following Ra’s retirement in 1992 due to illness, the band remained active as The Sun Ra Arkestra, and, as of 2023, continues performing under the leadership of veteran Ra sideman Marshall Allen.

Though his mainstream success was limited, Ra was a prolific recording artist and frequent live performer, and remained influential throughout his life for his music and persona. He is now widely considered an innovator; among his distinctions are his pioneering work in free improvisation and modal jazz and his early use of electronic keyboards and synthesizers. Over his career, he recorded dozens of singles and over 100 full-length albums, comprising well over 1,000 songs, making him one of the most prolific recording artists of the 20th century.

The “claw” of this odd looking “creature” in the featured photo is a gas cloud known as a cometary globule. This globule, however, has ruptured. Cometary globules are typically characterized by dusty heads and elongated tails. These features cause cometary globules to have visual similarities to comets, but in reality they are very much different. Globules are frequently the birthplaces of stars, and many show very young stars in their heads. The reason for the rupture in the head of this object is not yet known. The galaxy to the left of the globule is huge, very far in the distance, and only placed near CG4 by chance superposition.

This Picture of the Week shows the jewel-bright spiral galaxy NGC 4689, which lies 54 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. This constellation has the distinction of being the only one of the 88 constellations officially recognised by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to be named after an historical figure, Queen Berenice II of Egypt. The latin word ‘coma’ references her hair, meaning that NGC 4689 can be said to be found in the hair of a queen. Some people of Berenice’s time would have meant this quite literally, as the story goes that her court astronomer thought that a missing lock of Berenice’s hair had been catasterised (a word meaning ‘placed amongst the stars’) by the gods: hence the name of the constellation, Coma Berenices.

NGC 4689 holds an interesting — albeit less royal — place in modern astronomy too. The Universe is so incredibly vast that at a distance of a mere 54 million light-years NGC 4689 is relatively nearby for a galaxy. This image has been made using data from two sets of observations, one made in 2019 and 2024, both of which were made as a part of programmes that observed multiple ‘nearby’ galaxies. The 2024 observing programme is an interesting example of how Hubble — a relatively old but extraordinarily productive telescope — can support the work of the technologically cutting-edge Webb telescope. Observations collected by Webb stand to transform our understanding of how galaxies transform and evolve over time, by providing data of an unprecedented level of detail and clarity. However, thanks to their complementary capabilities, new observations from Hubble — such as those used to create this image — can assist the work done using Webb. In this case, the Hubble data were collected in order to get a more accurate grasp of the stellar populations of nearby galaxies, which is crucial to understanding the evolution of galaxies. Thus, NGC 4689 is playing an important role in developing our understanding of how all galaxies evolve. In fact, it is observed enough that it has been the subject of a Hubble Picture of the Week before, in 2020.

John Robert “Joe” Cocker OBE (20 May 1944 – 22 December 2014) was an English singer known for his gritty, bluesy voice and dynamic stage performances that featured expressive body movements. Most of his best known singles, such as “Feelin’ Alright?” and “Unchain My Heart“, were recordings of songs written by other song writers, though he composed a number of songs for most of his albums as well, often in conjunction with songwriting partner Chris Stainton.

His first album featured a recording of the Beatles‘ “With a Little Help from My Friends“, which brought him to near-instant stardom. The song reached number one in the UK in 1968, became a staple of his many live shows (Woodstock and the Isle of Wight in 1969, the Party at the Palace in 2002) and was also known as the theme song for the late 1980s American TV series The Wonder Years. He continued his success with his second album, which included a second Beatles song: “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window“. A hastily thrown together 1970 US tour led to the live double-album Mad Dogs & Englishmen, which featured an all-star band organized by Leon Russell. His 1974 recording of “You Are So Beautiful” reached number five in the US, and became his signature song. Cocker’s best selling song was the US number one “Up Where We Belong“, a duet with Jennifer Warnes that earned a 1983 Grammy Award. He released a total of 22 studio albums over a 43-year recording career.

In 1993, Cocker was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Male. He was awarded a bronze Sheffield Legends plaque in his hometown in 2007, and received an OBE the following year for services to music. Cocker was ranked number 97 on Rolling Stone‘s 100 greatest singers list.

This new infrared image of NGC 346 from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) traces emission from cool gas and dust. In this image blue represents silicates and sooty chemical molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. More diffuse red emission shines from warm dust heated by the brightest and most massive stars in the heart of the region. Bright patches and filaments mark areas with abundant numbers of protostars.  This image includes 7.7-micron light shown in blue, 10 microns in cyan, 11.3 microns in green, 15 microns in yellow, and 21 microns in red (770W, 1000W, 1130W, 1500W, and 2100W filters, respectively). [Image description: The lower half of this image contains arcs of bluish material that form a boat-like shape. One end of these arcs points to the top right of the image, while the other end points toward the bottom left. Another plume of blue filaments expands from the centre to the top left, resembling the mast of a sailboat. Within and extending beyond the boat shape are translucent curtains of pink, which cover most of the image. Stars are noticeably scarce. A couple dozen bright pink patches with six short diffraction spikes are scattered within the blue filaments. Many faint blue dots, or stars, also speckle the background, which is black or dark grey.]

Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend born 19 May 1945) is an English musician. He is the co-founder, guitarist, second lead vocalist and principal songwriter of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. His aggressive playing style and poetic songwriting techniques, with the Who and in other projects, have earned him critical acclaim.

Townshend has written more than 100 songs for 12 of the Who’s studio albums. These include concept albums, the rock operas Tommy (1969) and Quadrophenia (1973), plus popular rock radio staples such as Who’s Next (1971); as well as dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilation albums such as Odds & Sods (1974). He has also written more than 100 songs that have appeared on his solo albums, as well as radio jingles and television theme songs.

While known primarily as a guitarist, Townshend also plays keyboards, banjo, accordion, harmonica, ukulele, mandolin, violin, synthesiser, bass guitar, and drums; he is self-taught on all of these instruments and plays on his own solo albums, several Who albums, and as a guest contributor to an array of other artists’ recordings. Townshend has also contributed to and authored many newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, essays, books, and scripts, and he has collaborated as a lyricist and composer for many other musical acts.

In 1983, Townshend received the Brit Award for Lifetime Achievement and in 1990 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Who. Townshend was ranked No. 3 in Dave Marsh‘s 1994 list of Best Guitarists in The New Book of Rock Lists. In 2001, he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award as a member of the Who; and in 2008 he received Kennedy Center Honors. He was ranked No. 10 in Gibson.com’s 2011 list of the top 50 guitarists, and No. 37 on Rolling Stone‘s 2023 list of 250 greatest guitarists of all time. He and Roger Daltrey received The George and Ira Gershwin Awardfor Lifetime Musical Achievement at UCLA on 21 May 2016.

Thomas Wright Scott (born May 19, 1948) is an American saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He was a member of The Blues Brothers and led the jazz fusion group L.A. Express.

Scott was born in Los Angeles, California, US. He is the son of film and television composer Nathan Scott, who had more than 850 television credits and more than 100 film credits as a composer, orchestrator, and conductor, including music for Dragnet and Lassie.

Tom Scott’s career began as a teenager as leader of the jazz ensemble Neoteric Trio, and the band Men of Note. After that, he worked as a session musician. In 1970, Quincy Jones said of him: “Tom Scott, the saxophonist; he’s 21, and out of sight! Plays any idiom you can name, and blows like crazy on half a dozen horns.”

Scott wrote the theme tunes for the television shows Starsky and Hutch and The Streets of San Francisco. In 1974, with the L.A. Express, he composed the score for the animated movie, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat. He played the soprano saxophone solo on the number-one hit single “Listen to What the Man Said” by the band Wings. In 1976, he played the theme “I Still Can’t Sleep” in Taxi Driver. Scott also composed the soundtrack for 1980’s Stir Crazy. In 1982, he collaborated with Johnny Mathis on “Without Us”, the theme to the 1980s sitcom Family Ties. He also played the lyricon, an electronic wind instrument on Michael Jackson‘s “Billie Jean“, as well as lyricon and saxophone on The Grateful Dead‘s album Terrapin Station.