mick laBriola

Compared to their more intricate spiral cousins, elliptical galaxies resemble soft, hazy clouds. These galaxies have smooth, undefined boundaries, and bright cores surrounded by a fuzzy, diffuse glow. However, looks can be deceiving. At least 10% of ellipticals extend much further out into the cosmos than you might expect, and possess a range of far finer structures than first meets the eye — features such as loops and shells.

Located around 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Pisces (The Fish), the galaxy to the upper-left of this image is named NGC 474. It is a stunning example of a shell elliptical galaxy; enormous wispy tails flick around the galaxy’s main body, while the inner structure is formed of a series of nested concentric rings. In fact, the full extent of the galaxy cannot even be contained in this field of view. The tendril-like outer regions of NGC 474 billow and wisp away like smoke, extending outwards for large distances from the galaxy’s main bulk.

Astronomers are unsure why some galaxies take on this kind of appearance and structure, but they believe it concerns gravity — namely, how nearby galaxies gravitationally interact with one another. It is possible that the spiral galaxy to the lower-right, NGC 470, has been tugging on its larger friend for billions of years, causing density waves to reshape its structure.

Maurice “Mobetta” Brown (born January 6, 1981) originally from Harvey, Illinois is a Grammy Award-winning American jazz trumpeter, producer and composer. As a member of Tedeschi Trucks Band, he shared the 2011 Grammy for Best Blues Album (Revelator).

Brown was born in Harvey, Illinois and grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago. He met Wynton Marsalis in the 8th grade while performing at a seminar attended by Marsalis. While attending Hillcrest High School in Country Club Hills, Brown was chosen to participate in the National High School GRAMMY Band, which led Ramsey Lewis to begin hiring Brown to perform with his band.

Brown began college at Northern Illinois University, then transferred to Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, studying under jazz clarinetist Alvin Batiste. Later, he moved to New Orleans, where he led a regular Tuesday night residency at the Snug Harbor jazz club and released his first album, “Hip to Bop”.

Paolo Conte (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpaolo ˈkonte]; born 6 January 1937) is an Italian singer, pianist, composer, and lawyer notable for his grainy, resonant voice. His compositions are evocative of Italian and Mediterranean sounds, as well as of jazz music and South American atmospheres.

Paolo Conte was born in Asti, Piedmont. His parents were avid jazz fans and Conte and his younger brother Giorgio spent their formative years listening to a lot of early jazz and blues recordings. After obtaining a law degree at the University of Parma, Conte started working as an assistant solicitor with his father, simultaneously pursuing his musical studies. He learned to play the trombone, the vibraphone and the piano, and formed a jazz band with his brother on drums. Conte’s skill for composing music and original arrangements was noted by music producer Lilli Greco, who paired Conte with lyricist Vito Pallavicini. They wrote songs for Adriano Celentano (Azzurro, 1968), Caterina Caselli (Insieme a te non ci sto più, 1968), Fausto Leali (Deborah, 1968) and Enzo Jannacci (Messico e nuvole, 1970). In 1974 Conte recorded his first album, Paolo Conte. The following year, he released another eponymous album. Following a series of well-received shows at Club Tenco in Sanremo in 1976 and the commercial success of his third album, ‘Un gelato al limon’, Conte concentrated almost exclusively on his solo career.

Some of Conte’s most popular songs have been used as film soundtracks, including “Come Di” in I Am David (2003) and Mickey Blue Eyes (1999), “Via con me” in French Kiss (1995), Mostly Martha (2001) and Welcome to Collinwood (2002). In 1997 Conte won the Nastro d’Argento for Best Score for the film La freccia azzurra.

Alexandra Elene MacLean Denny (6 January 1947 – 21 April 1978) was an English singer-songwriter who was lead singer of the British folk rockband Fairport Convention. She has been described as “the pre-eminent British folk rock singer”.

After briefly working with the Strawbs, Denny joined Fairport Convention in 1968, remaining with them until 1969. She formed the short-lived band Fotheringay in 1970, before focusing on a solo career. Between 1971 and 1977, Denny released four solo albums: The North Star Grassman and the Ravens, Sandy, Like an Old Fashioned Waltz and Rendezvous. She also duetted with Robert Plant on “The Battle of Evermore” for Led Zeppelin‘s album Led Zeppelin IV in 1971. Denny died in 1978 at the age of 31 due to injuries and health issues related to alcohol abuse.

Music publications Uncut and Mojo have called Denny Britain’s finest female singer-songwriter. Her composition “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” has been recorded by Judy Collins, Eva Cassidy, Nina Simone, 10,000 Maniacs and Cat Power. Her recorded work has been the subject of numerous reissues, along with a wealth of previously unreleased material which has appeared over the more than 40 years since her death, most notably including a 19-CD box set which was released in November 2010.

Earl Eugene Scruggs (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012) was an American musician noted for popularizing a three-finger banjo picking style, now called “Scruggs style,” which is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His three-finger style of playing was radically different from the traditional way the five-string banjo had previously been played. This new style of playing became popular and elevated the banjo from its previous role as a background rhythm instrument to featured solo status. He popularized the instrument across several genres of music.

Scruggs’ career began at age 21 when he was hired to play in Bill Monroe‘s band, The Blue Grass Boys. The name “bluegrass” eventually became the eponym for the entire genre of country music now known by that title. Despite considerable success with Monroe, performing on the Grand Ole Opryand recording classic hits like “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” Scruggs resigned from the group in 1946 due to their exhausting touring schedule. Fellow band member Lester Flatt resigned as well, and he and Scruggs later paired up in a new group they called Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. Scruggs’ banjo instrumental called “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” released in 1949, became an enduring hit, and had a rebirth of popularity to a younger generation when it was featured in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. The song won two Grammy Awards and, in 2005, was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry of works of unusual merit.

Flatt and Scruggs brought bluegrass music into mainstream popularity in the early 1960s with their country hit, “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” — the theme music for the television sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies — the first Scruggs recording to reach number one on the Billboard charts. Over their 20-year association, Flatt and Scruggs recorded over 50 albums and 75 singles. The duo broke up in 1969, chiefly because, where Scruggs wanted to switch styles to fit a more modern sound, Flatt was a traditionalist who opposed the change, and believed doing so would alienate a fan base of bluegrass purists. Although each of them formed a new band to match their visions, neither of them ever regained the success they had achieved as a team.

Scruggs received four Grammy awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a National Medal of Arts. He became a member of the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1985, Flatt and Scruggs were inducted together into the Country Music Hall of Fame and named, as a duo, number 24 on CMT‘s 40 Greatest Men of Country Music. Scruggs was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor in the folk and traditional arts in the United States. Four works by Scruggs have been placed in the Grammy Hall of Fame. After Scruggs’ death in 2012 at age 88, the Earl Scruggs Center was founded near his birthplace in Shelby, North Carolina, with the aid of a federal grant and corporate donors. The center is a $5.5 million facility that features the musical contributions of Scruggs and serves as an educational center providing classes and field trips for students.

A new composite image released last week by NASA shows a galactic light show taking place 23 million light years away in NGC 4258, a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way. NGC 4258 has two extra spiral arms which reveal a color-filled glow in X-ray, optical and radio light. The stunning display is the result of a black hole, shock waves, and vast amounts of gas which display as different colors based on the instruments NASA used to capture the data. Messier 106 (also known as NGC 4258) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781. M106 is at a distance of about 22 to 25 million light-years away from Earth. M106 contains an active nucleus classified as a Type 2 Seyfert, and the presence of a central supermassive black hole has been demonstrated from radio-wavelength observations of the rotation of a disk of molecular gas orbiting within the inner light-year around the black hole. NGC 4217 is a possible companion galaxy of Messier 106. A Type II supernova was observed in M106 in May 2014.

Paul Wertico (born January 5, 1953 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American drummer. He gained recognition as a member of the Pat Metheny Group from 1983 until 2001, leaving the group to spend more time with his family and to pursue other musical interests. After Pat Metheny heard the Simon and Bard Group with Wertico and bassist Steve Rodby, he invited both to join his band. During his time with Metheny, Wertico played on ten albums and four videos, appeared on television, and toured around the world. He won seven Grammy Awards (for “Best Jazz Fusion Performance,” “Best Contemporary Jazz Performance,” and “Best Rock Instrumental Performance”), magazine polls, and received several gold records.

He formed the Paul Wertico Trio with John Moulder and Eric Hochberg and collaborated with Larry Coryell, Kurt Elling, and Jeff Berlin. From 2000 to 2007, he was a member of SBB, the platinum-record-winning Polish progressive rock band. Wertico was a member of the Larry Coryell Power Trio until Coryell’s death in 2017.

In 2009, Wertico became a member of the jazz-rock group Marbin with Israeli musicians Danny Markovitch and Dani Rabin. The group performed as Paul Wertico’s Mid-East/Mid-West Alliance and recorded an album for the Chicago Sessions label that received accolades from the Chicago Tribune, DRUM!, and Modern Drummer.

Wertico formed Wertico Cain & Gray with multi-instrumentalists David Cain and Larry Gray. Their debut album Sound Portraits (2013) won Best Live Performance Album in the 13th Annual Independent Music Awards, and their fourth album Realization (2015) was nominated for Best Live Performance Album and Best Long Form Video in the 15th Annual Independent Music Awards.

Wilbert Huntington Harrison (January 5, 1929 – October 26, 1994) was an American rhythm and blues singer, pianist, guitarist and harmonica player. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Harrison had a Billboard #1 record in 1959 with the song “Kansas City“. The song was written in 1952 and was one of the first credited collaborations by the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.Harrison recorded “Kansas City” for the Harlem-based entrepreneur Bobby Robinson, who released it on his Fury record label.

At the height of the song’s success, Robinson was sued by Savoy Records who informed them that the release of the record in March 1959 violated a contract Harrison had with that label that was to expire in August 1959. The litigation, which lasted until September 1959, abruptly prevented Robinson from issuing follow-ups to “Kansas City” while Harrison was a star.

Meanwhile, Harrison continued to perform and record but it would be another ten years before he again cracked the Billboard Top 40 when he released the self-penned “Let’s Work Together (Part 1)” that went to #32 in early 1970 on the Billboard Hot 100. The 1970 hit version was released as a single on Sue Records (Sue 11) and was backed with “Let’s Work Together (Part 2)”. The song also was released in a 5 minute 19 second version on the Sue Records album SSLP-8801 Let’s Work Together. The song was originally released by Harrison in 1962 with different lyrics as “Let’s Stick Together” on Fury 1059 and Fury 1063.

Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten (née Nevills) (January 5, 1893 – June 29, 1987) was an American blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter. A self-taught left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed her own original style. She played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down, as she was left-handed. This position required her to play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as “Cotten picking”.

Cotten was born in 1893 to a musical family near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in an area that would later be incorporated as Carrboro. Her parents were George Nevill (also spelled Nevills) and Louisa (or Louise) Price Nevill. Elizabeth was the youngest of five children. She named herself on her first day of school, when the teacher asked her name, because at home she was only called “Li’l Sis.” At age seven, she began to play her older brother’s banjo. “From that day on,” she said, “nobody had no peace in that house.

Discovered by Charles Messier in 1764, M20 is a star-forming nebula located 9,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. Also known as the Trifid Nebula, M20 has an apparent magnitude of 6.3 and can be spotted with a small telescope. It is best observed during August.

This eerie Hubble image features the center of the Trifid Nebula and the three wing-like bands of thick dust for which the nebula was named. A group of recently formed, massive, bright stars toward the center of the nebula is easily visible. These stars are releasing a flood of ultraviolet radiation that dramatically influences the structure and evolution of the surrounding nebula. Star formation is no longer occurring in the immediate vicinity of this group of bright stars because their intense radiation has blown away the gas and dust from which new stars are made.

John McLaughlin (born 4 January 1942), also known as “Mahavishnu John“, is an English guitarist, bandleader and composer. His music includes many genres of jazz, combined with elements of rock, Indian classical music, Western classical music, flamenco, and blues. He is one of the pioneering figures in fusion.

After contributing to several key British groups of the early 1960s, McLaughlin made Extrapolation, his first album as a bandleader, in 1969. He then moved to the U.S., where he played with Tony Williams‘s group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his electric jazz-fusion albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, and On the Corner. His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.

McLaughlin’s solo on “Miles Beyond” from his album Live at Ronnie Scott’s won the 2018 Grammy Award for the Best Improvised Jazz Solo. He has been awarded multiple “Guitarist of the Year” and “Best Jazz Guitarist” awards from magazines such as DownBeat and Guitar Player based on reader polls. In 2003, he was ranked 49th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time“. In 2009, DownBeat included McLaughlin in its unranked list of “75 Great Guitarists”, in the “Modern Jazz Maestros” category. In 2012, Guitar World magazine ranked him 63rd on its top 100 list. In 2010, Jeff Beck called McLaughlin “the best guitarist alive,” and Pat Metheny has also described him as the world’s greatest guitarist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9w8Py9pcpY

Frank Wellington Wess (January 4, 1922 – October 30, 2013) was an American jazz saxophonist and flautist. In addition to his extensive solo work, Wess is remembered for his time in Count Basie‘s band from the early 1950s into the 1960s. Critic Scott Yannow described him as one of the premier proteges of Lester Young, and a leading jazz flautist of his era—using the latter instrument to bring new colors to Basie’s music.

Wess was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of a principal father and a schoolteacher mother. He began with classical music training and played in Oklahoma in high school. He later switched to jazz on moving to Washington, D. C. and by nineteen was working with big bands. His career was interrupted by World War II although he did play with a military band in the period. After leaving the military, he joined Billy Eckstine‘s orchestra. He returned to Washington D.C. a few years afterwards and received a degree in flute at the city’s Modern School of Music. He played tenor sax with Count Basie from 1953 to 1964, doubling on flute. Wess was considered one of the best jazz flautists of his time. From 1959 to 1964, he won the Down Beat magazine critics’ poll for flute. He was a member of Clark Terry‘s big band from 1967 into the 1970s and played in the New York Jazz Quartet (with Roland Hanna). He also did a variety of work for TV. In 1968 he contributed to the album The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra. He played tenor and alto sax, doubling on flute throughout his career.

In the 1980s and 1990s, he worked with Kenny Barron, Rufus Reid, Buck Clayton, Benny Carter, Billy Taylor, Harry Edison, Mel Tormé, Ernestine Anderson, Louie Bellson, John Pizzarelli, Howard Alden, Dick Hyman, Jane Jarvis, Frank Vignola and was a featured member of the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra. In the 2000s, Wess released two albums with Hank Jones. In 2007, Wess was named an NEA Jazz Master by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.

Frankie Newton (William Frank Newton, January 4, 1906 – March 11, 1954) was a jazz trumpeter from Emory, Virginia. He played in several New York City bands in the 1920s and 1930s, including those led by Sam Wooding, Chick Webb, Charlie Barnet, Andy Kirk and Charlie “Fess” Johnson. In the 1940s he played with bands led by Lucky Millinder and Pete Brown. He played in clubs in New York and Boston, with musicians such as pianist Art Tatum, pianist James P. Johnson, drummer Sid Catlett and clarinetist Edmond Hall.

He accompanied Bessie Smith on her final recordings (November 24, 1933), Maxine Sullivan on ‘Loch Lomond‘, and Billie Holiday on her original “Strange Fruit” session in 1939.

Between March 1937 and August 1939, eight recording sessions issued under Newton’s name were produced. Three sessions in 1937 were made for Irving Mills‘s Variety label. In 1939, Newton recorded a six-song session with Victor, a four-song session for Vocalion, two individual one-song sessions for Blue Note, and finally one two-song session for Vocalion—14 records in all.

He also played with Art Tatum on extended versions of “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Oh, Lady Be Good!“, recorded in Harlem after hours. These finally came out in 1973 as part of Tatum’s album God Is in the House, first on LP and later on CD.