mick laBriola

Lonnie Liston Smith Jr. (born December 28, 1940) is an American jazz, soul, and funk musician who played with such jazz artists as Pharoah Sanders and Miles Davis before forming Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes, recording a number of albums widely regarded as classics in the fusion, smooth jazz and acid jazz genres.

Smith was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, United States to a musical family; his father was a member of Richmond Gospel music group The Harmonizing Four, and he remembered groups such as the Swan Silvertones and the Soul Stirrers (featuring a young Sam Cooke) as regular visitors to the house when he was a child. While passing through Miles Davis’ ever-changing line-up, Smith had finally formed his own group, ‘Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes’ in 1973, together with his partner in Pharoah Sanders group, Cecil McBee, on bass, George Barron (soprano and tenor sax), Joe Beck (guitar), David Lee, Jr. (drums), James Mtume (percussion), Sonny Morgan (percussion), Badal Roy (tabla drums), and Geeta Vashi (tamboura). Blending atmospheric fusion, soul and funk, Smith was encouraged by Bob Thiele, the owner of Flying Dutchman Records, who had produced both Pharoah Sanders’ and Gato Barbieri’s output while Smith had been in their bands, the latter for Thiele’s newly formed label. For his debut album, Astral Traveling (Flying Dutchman, 1973), Smith re-recorded the title song he had composed and played on with the Pharoah Sanders band two years previous. An instrumental album, Astral Travelling also contained a re-arrangement of the gospel standard “Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord”, which Smith had also previously arranged for Sanders.

Edmund Leonard Thigpen (December 28, 1930 – January 13, 2010) was an American jazz drummer, best known for his work with the Oscar Peterson trio from 1959 to 1965. Thigpen also performed with the Billy Taylor trio from 1956 to 1959.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Thigpen was raised in Los Angeles and attended Thomas Jefferson High School, where Art Farmer, Dexter Gordon and Chico Hamilton also attended. After majoring in sociology at Los Angeles City College, Thigpen returned to East St. Louis for one year to pursue music while living with his father who had been playing with Andy Kirk‘s Clouds of Joy. His father, Ben Thigpen, was a drummer who played with Andy Kirk for sixteen years during the 1930s and 1940s.

Thigpen first worked professionally in New York City with the Cootie Williams orchestra from 1951 to 1952 at the Savoy Ballroom. During this time he played with musicians such as Dinah Washington, Gil Mellé, Oscar Pettiford, Eddie Vinson, Paul Quinichette, Ernie Wilkins, Charlie Rouse, Lennie Tristano, Jutta Hipp, Johnny Hodges, Dorothy Ashby, Bud Powell, and Billy Taylor.

In 1959 he replaced guitarist Herb Ellis in the Oscar Peterson Trio in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 1961 he recorded in Los Angeles, featuring on the Teddy Edwards–Howard McGhee Quintet album entitled Together Again for the Contemporary label with Phineas Newborn Jr. and Ray Brown. After leaving Peterson, Thigpen recorded the album Out of the Storm as a leader for Verve in 1966. He then went on to tour with Ella Fitzgerald from 1967 to 1972.

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

Earl Kenneth Hines, also known as Earl “Fatha“ Hines (December 28, 1903 – April 22, 1983), was an American jazz pianist and bandleader. He was one of the most influential figures in the development of jazz piano and, according to one source, “one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz”.

The trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (a member of Hines’s big band, along with Charlie Parker) wrote, “The piano is the basis of modern harmony. This little guy came out of Chicago, Earl Hines. He changed the style of the piano. You can find the roots of Bud Powell, Herbie Hancock, all the guys who came after that. If it hadn’t been for Earl Hines blazing the path for the next generation to come, it’s no telling where or how they would be playing now. There were individual variations but the style of … the modern piano came from Earl Hines.”

The pianist Lennie Tristano said, “Earl Hines is the only one of us capable of creating real jazz and real swing when playing all alone.” Horace Silversaid, “He has a completely unique style. No one can get that sound, no other pianist”.^[3] Erroll Garner said, “When you talk about greatness, you talk about Art Tatum and Earl Hines”. Count Basie said that Hines was “the greatest piano player in the world”. Earl Hines was born in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, 12 miles from the center of Pittsburgh, in 1903. His father, Joseph Hines, played cornet and was the leader of the Eureka Brass Band in Pittsburgh, and his stepmother was a church organist.

vdB 24 is a reflection nebula in the constellation of Perseus. It is illuminated by the luminous and variable star ‘XY Per’, which is the bright star just below the blue nebulosity near the center of the image. vdB 24 is a faint, blue reflection nebula that lies roughly 1,140 light-years away in the constellation of Perseus, in the same galactic region as the California Nebula ( Sh2-220).

Terry John Bozzio (born December 27, 1950) is an American drummer best known for his work with Missing Persons and Frank Zappa.

He has been featured on nine solo or collaborative albums, 26 albums with Zappa, and seven albums with Missing Persons. He has been a prolific sideman, playing on numerous releases by other artists since the mid-1970s. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1997. His son and stepdaughter are also drummers; the latter, Marina, being a member of the band Aldious. Terry Bozzio was born on December 27, 1950, in San Francisco, California. He started at age 6 playing makeshift drum sets.

Johnny Frigo (December 27, 1916 – July 4, 2007) was an American jazz violinist and bassist. He appeared in the 1940s as a violinist before working as a bassist. He returned to the violin in the 1980s and enjoyed a comeback, recording several albums as a leader.

Frigo was born in Chicago and studied violin for three years beginning at age seven. In high school he started to play double bass in dance orchestras. In 1942 he played with Chico Marx‘s orchestra and performed a comedy routine on violin with Marx on piano. He entered the United States Coast Guard during World War II and played in a band on Ellis Island with Al Haig and Kai Winding.

After a brief turn at active service near the end of the war he moved to New Jersey. He toured with Jimmy Dorsey‘s band from 1945 to 1947, later forming the Soft Winds trio with Dorsey’s guitarist Herb Ellis and pianist Lou Carter. During this time he wrote the music and lyrics to “Detour Ahead”, which has been recorded by Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Evans, and Carola. During that time, he also wrote the sardonic swing tune “I Told Ya I Love Ya Now Get Out” which was recorded by June Christy and the Stan Kenton Orchestra. Chicago jazz vocalist Erin McDougaldrecorded the song 50 years later on her album The Auburn Collection (2004).

Willie Gary “Bunk” Johnson (December 27, 1879 – July 7, 1949) was a prominent jazz trumpeter in New Orleans. Johnson gave the year of his birth as 1879, although there is speculation that he may have been younger by as much as a decade.

Johnson received lessons from Adam Olivier and began playing professionally in Olivier’s orchestra. Johnson probably played a few adolescent jobs with Buddy Bolden, but was not a regular member of Bolden’s Band (contrary to Johnson’s claim). Johnson was regarded as one of the top trumpeters in New Orleans in the years 1905–1915, in between repeatedly leaving the city to tour with minstrel shows and circus bands.

After he failed to appear for a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade job in 1915, he learned that krewe members intended to do him bodily harm. So he left town, touring with shows and then by the early 1920s settling in New Iberia, Louisiana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWyjIq_TQzk&t=103s

The structure is similar to most Flamenco dances and can be broken down as follows:

• ENTRADA/SALIDA (ENTRANCE): The dancer enters the stage via marking steps (marcando)
• LLAMADA: This is the call for the singer to sing the first letra.
• FIRST LETRA: The singer sings 7-12 sets of 12 count phrases
• SECOND LETRA OR FALSETA: The Falsetta is a musical phrase or phrases that the guitarist has composed or improvises that the dancer interprets with choreography.
• ESCOBILLA: Several sets of 12 count footwork phrases
• SUBIDA/PALMAS/CHOREOGRAPHY that transitions into a BULERIAS. Usually, a REMATE/LLAMADA, a finish and a cue that are performed together in sequence, will occur here to call in the singer for the BULERIAS FINALE.
• BULERIAS – FINALE for all 12 count dances. Here, the Bulerías is a structured improvisation with set phrases, a set structure, and learned or improvised choreography.

Messier 94 (also known as NGC 4736) is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781, and catalogued by Charles Messier two days later. Although some references describe M94 as a barred spiral galaxy, the “bar” structure appears to be more oval-shaped. The galaxy has two ring structures. 16.01 million light years distant.

John Scofield (born December 26, 1951), sometimes referred to as “Sco”, is an American jazz-rock guitarist and composer whose music includes bebop, jazz fusion, funk, blues, soul, and rock. He has worked with Miles Davis, Dave Liebman, Joe Henderson, Charles Mingus, Joey DeFrancesco, Herbie Hancock, Eddie Palmieri, Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Joe Lovano, Pat Martino, Mavis Staples, Phil Lesh, Billy Cobham, Medeski Martin & Wood, George Duke, Jaco Pastorius, John Mayer, Robert Glasper, and Gov’t Mule.

Scofield’s family left Ohio and moved to Wilton, Connecticut, where he discovered his interest in music. Educated at the Berklee College of Music, Scofield left school to record with Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan. He joined the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band soon after and spent two years playing, recording, and touring with them. He recorded with Charles Mingus in 1976 and replaced Pat Metheny in Gary Burton‘s quartet.

In 1976 Scofield signed with Enja, which released his first album, John Scofield, in 1977. He recorded with pianist Hal Galper on Rough Housein 1978 and then on Galper’s album Ivory Forest (1980), where he played a solo rendition of “Monk’s Mood” by Thelonious Monk. In 1979 he formed a trio with his mentor Steve Swallow and Adam Nussbaum which, with drummer Bill Stewart replacing Nussbaum, became the signature group of Scofield’s career.

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

George Edward “Butch” Ballard (December 26, 1918 – October 1, 2011) was an American jazz drummer who played with Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. Ballard was born in Camden, New Jersey and grew up in the Frankford section of Philadelphia. As a child he followed American Legion parades near his home, focusing particularly on the drummer. When he was about 10 years old, Ballard’s father bought him a set of drums from a pawnbroker and he began to take lessons for 75 cents each. He got the nickname “Butch” after Machine Gun Butch, a character in the film The Big House (1930). He attended Northeast High School in Philadelphia. When he was 21, he married Jessie, for whom he bought a house in Philadelphia in 1950. At around 16 years old, Ballard listened to Herb Thornton‘s band at the Boys Club in Philadelphia. They let him play with them, and he was invited to join a band by a man who heard him. For the following few months, he carried his drums across Philadelphia to rehearse.

The Rosette Nebula (also known as Caldwell 49) is a large spherical H II region (circular in appearance) located near one end of a giant molecular cloud in the Monoceros region of the Milky Way Galaxy. The open cluster NGC 2244 (Caldwell 50) is closely associated with the nebulosity, the starsof the cluster having been formed from the nebula’s matter. The cluster and nebula lie at a distance of some 5,000 light-years from Earth) and measure roughly 130 light years in diameter. The radiation from the young stars excites the atoms in the nebula, causing them to emit radiation themselves producing the emission nebula we see. The mass of the nebula is estimated to be around 10,000 solar masses.

Don Gabriel Pullen (December 25, 1941 – April 22, 1995) was an American jazz pianist and organist. Pullen developed a strikingly individual style throughout his career. He composed pieces ranging from blues to bebop and modern jazz. The great variety of his body of work makes it difficult to pigeonhole his musical style.

Pullen was born on December 25, 1941, and raised in Roanoke, Virginia. Growing up in a musical family, he learned the piano at an early age. He played with the choir in his local church and was heavily influenced by his cousin, Clyde “Fats” Wright, who was a professional jazz pianist. He took some lessons in classical piano and knew little of jazz. At this time, he was mainly aware of church music and the blues.

Pullen left Roanoke for Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina to study for a medical career but soon he realized that his true vocation was music. After playing with local musicians and being exposed for the first time to albums of the major jazz musicians and composers he abandoned his medical studies. He set out to make a career in music, desirous of playing like Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy.

In 1964 he went to Chicago for a few weeks, where he encountered Muhal Richard Abrams‘ philosophy of making music. He then headed for New York, where he was soon introduced to avant-garde saxophonist Giuseppi Logan, who invited Pullen to play piano on his two albums, Giuseppi Logan (ESP, October 1964) and More (ESP, May 1965), both exercises in structured free playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMwA0T_ZYag

Charles “Don” Alias (December 25, 1939 in New York City – March 28, 2006 in New York City) was an American jazz percussionist.

Alias was best known for playing congas and other hand drums. He was, however, a capable drum kit performer: for example, Alias played drums on the song “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” from trumpeter Miles Davis‘s album Bitches Brew (1969) when neither Lenny White nor Jack DeJohnette was able to play the marching band-inspired rhythm requested by Davis.

Alias performed on hundreds of recordings and was perhaps best known for his associations with Miles Davis and saxophonist David Sanborn, though he also performed or recorded with the group Weather Report, singer Joni Mitchell, pianist Herbie Hancock, the Brecker Brothers, Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny, Nina Simone and many others. Alias was born in New York City and arrived in Boston in the early 1960s intending to study medicine but, after playing congas in a number of local bands, made an abrupt career switch.