mick laBriola

NGC 2985 is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Ursa Major. It is located at a distance of circa 70 million light years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that NGC 2985 is about 95,000 light years across. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 3, 1785.

The galaxy is seen with an inclination of 37 degrees. The galaxy has a bright nucleus from which emanate multiple tightly wound spiral fragments.Numerous blue knots are visible at the galactic disk. At the outer part of the galaxy lies a massive spiral arm that forms a pseudoring that encircles the galaxy. The inner part of the galaxy, where active star formation has been observed, has been found to be unstable, contrary to the outer stable one. It has been suggested that the presence of molecular clouds accounts for the instability of the region.

The nucleus of NGC 2985 is active, and based on its spectrum has been categorised as a LINER. The most accepted theory for the activity source is the presence of an accretion disk around a supermassive black hole.

Jack DeJohnette (born August 9, 1942) is an American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer.

An important figure of the fusion era of jazz, DeJohnette is one of the most influential jazz drummers of the 20th century, given his extensive work as leader and sideman for musicians including Charles Lloyd, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, John Abercrombie, Alice Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker, Herbie Hancock and John Scofield. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2007.

DeJohnette was born in Chicago, Illinois. He began his musical career as a pianist, studying from age four and first playing professionally at age fourteen. He later switched focus to the drums. DeJohnette credits his uncle, Roy I. Wood Sr., a Chicago disc jockey and vice president of the National Network of Black Broadcasters, as his inspiration to play music.

DeJohnette played R&B, hard bop, and avant-garde music in Chicago. He led his own groups in addition to playing with Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell and other eventual core members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (founded in 1965). He also occasionally performed with Sun Ra and his Arkestra (and later in New York as well). In the early 1960s, DeJohnette had the opportunity to sit in for three tunes with John Coltrane and his quintet, an early foray into playing with big-name jazz musicians.

In 1966 DeJohnette moved to New York City, where he became a member of the Charles Lloyd Quartet. A band that recognized the potential influence of rock and roll on jazz, Lloyd’s group was where DeJohnette first encountered pianist Keith Jarrett, who would work extensively with him throughout his career. However, DeJohnette left the group in early 1968, citing Lloyd’s deteriorating, “flat” playing as his main reason for leaving.While Lloyd’s band was where he received international recognition for the first time, it was not the only group DeJohnette played with during his early years in New York, as he also worked with groups including Jackie McLean, Abbey Lincoln, Betty Carter, and Bill Evans. DeJohnette joined Evans’ trio in 1968, the same year the group headlined the Montreux Jazz Festival and produced the album Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival. In November 1968 he worked briefly with Stan Getz and his quartet, which led to his first recordings with Miles Davis.

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

Flamenco Fridays featuring Seguiriyas-Solea and Bulerias.

Siguiriyas (Spanish pronunciation: [seɣiˈɾiʝas]; also seguiriyas, siguerillas, siguirillas, seguidilla gitana, etc.) is a form of flamenco music belonging to the cante jondo category. Its deep, expressive style is among the most important in flamenco. The siguiriyas are normally played in the key of A Phrygian with each measure (or compás) consisting of 12 counts with emphasis on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 8th and 11th beats as shown here:

[1] 2 [3] 4 [5] 6 7 [8] 9 10 [11] 12

50 million light-years away a quasar resides in the hub of galaxy NGC 4438, an incredibly bright source of light and radiation that’s the result of a supermassive black hole actively feeding on nearby gas and dust (and pretty much anything else that ventures too closely.) Shining with the energy of 1,000 Milky Ways, this quasar — and others like it — are the brightest objects in the visible Universe… so bright, in fact, that they are used as beacons for interplanetary navigation by various exploration spacecraft. A monstrous black hole‘s rude table manners include blowing huge bubbles of hot gas into space. At least, that’s the gustatory practice followed by the supermassive black hole residing in the hub of the nearby galaxy NGC 4438. Known as a peculiar galaxy because of its unusual shape, NGC 4438 is in the Virgo Cluster, 50 million light-years from Earth.

NGC 4438 is the most curious interacting galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, due to the uncertainty surrounding the energy mechanism that heats the nuclear source; this energy mechanism may be a starburst region, or a black hole-powered active galactic nucleus (AGN). Both hypotheses are currently under investigation by astronomers.

This galaxy shows a highly distorted disk, including long tidal tails due to the gravitational interactions with other galaxies in the cluster and its companion. The aforementioned features explain why sources differ to classify it as a lenticular or spiral galaxy. NGC 4438 also shows signs of a past, extended, – but modest – starburst,^[4] a considerable deficiency of neutral hydrogen, as well as a displacement of the components of its interstellar medium – atomic hydrogen, molecular hydrogen, interstellar dust, and hot gas.

John Renbourn (8 August 1944 – 26 March 2015) was an English guitarist and songwriter. He was best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band’s existence (1967–1973).

While most commonly labelled a folk musician, Renbourn’s musical tastes and interests took in early music, classical music, jazz, blues and world music. His most influential album, Sir John Alot (1968), featured his take on tunes from the Medieval era.

John Renbourn studied classical guitar at school and it was during this period that he was introduced to Early Music. In the 1950s, along with many others, he was greatly influenced by the musical craze of “Skiffle” and this eventually led him to explore the work of artists such as Lead Belly, Josh White and Big Bill Broonzy.

In the 1960s the new craze in popular music was Rhythm and Blues, also the impact of Davey Graham was being felt. In 1961 Renbourn toured the South West with Mac MacLeod and repeated the tour in 1963. On returning from the South West Renbourn and MacLeod recorded a demo tape together. Renbourn briefly played in an R&B band while studying at the Kingston College of Art in London. Although the British “Folk Revival” was underway, most folk clubs were biased towards traditional, unaccompanied folk songs, and guitar players were not always welcome. However, the Roundhouse in London had a more tolerant attitude and here, John Renbourn joined blues and gospel singer Dorris Henderson, playing backing guitar and recording two albums with her.

Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career in the 1920s he was a popular arranger, having written charts for Fletcher Henderson‘s big band that shaped the swing style. He had an unusually long career that lasted into the 1990s. During the 1980s and ’90s, he was nominated for eight Grammy Awards, which included receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Born in New York City in 1907, he was given piano lessons by his mother and others in the neighborhood. He played trumpet and experimented briefly with C-melody saxophone before settling on alto saxophone. In the 1920s, he performed with June Clark, Billy Paige, and Earl Hines, then toured as a member of the Wilberforce Collegians led by Horace Henderson. He appeared on record for the first time in 1927 as a member of the Paradise Ten led by Charlie Johnson. He returned to the Collegians and became their bandleader through 1929, including a performance at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City. He left Henderson to take Redman’s former job as leader of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers in Detroit. In 1932 he formed a band in New York City that included Chu Berry, Sid Catlett, Cozy Cole, Bill Coleman, Ben Webster, Dicky Wells, and Teddy Wilson. Carter’s arrangements were complex. Among the most significant were “Keep a Song in Your Soul”, written for Henderson in 1930, and “Lonesome Nights” and “Symphony in Riffs” from 1933, both of which show Carter’s writing for saxophones.

The Crab Pulsar (PSR B0531+21) is a relatively young neutron star. The star is the central star in the Crab Nebula, a remnant of the supernova SN 1054, which was widely observed on Earth in the year 1054. Discovered in 1968, the pulsar was the first to be connected with a supernova remnant.

The Crab Pulsar is one of very few pulsars to be identified optically. The optical pulsar is roughly 20 kilometres (12 mi) in diameter and the pulsar “beams” rotate once every 33 milliseconds, or 30 times each second. The outflowing relativistic wind from the neutron star generates synchrotron emission, which produces the bulk of the emission from the nebula, seen from radio waves through to gamma rays. The most dynamic feature in the inner part of the nebula is the point where the pulsar’s equatorial wind slams into the surrounding nebula, forming a termination shock. The shape and position of this feature shifts rapidly, with the equatorial wind appearing as a series of wisp-like features that steepen, brighten, then fade as they move away from the pulsar into the main body of the nebula. The period of the pulsar’s rotation is slowing by 38 nanoseconds per day due to the large amounts of energy carried away in the pulsar wind.

The Crab Nebula is often used as a calibration source in X-ray astronomy. It is very bright in X-rays and the flux density and spectrum are known to be constant, with the exception of the pulsar itself. The pulsar provides a strong periodic signal that is used to check the timing of the X-ray detectors.  2000 pc distance.

Bassekou Kouyaté (born 1966) is a musician from Mali. His band is known as Ngoni ba.

He was born in Garana, Barouéli Cercle, 60 kilometres from Ségou in 1966. At the age of 12, he started playing the ngoni. In the late 1980s he moved to the capital Bamako. Kouyaté’s debut album Segu Blue was released internationally in 2007 by Out Here Records and distributed in the U.K. by Proper Music Distribution. The album was produced by Lucy Durán. He has also appeared on a number of albums by Toumani Diabaté and has performed in several European countries. In 2010, Kouyaté has been on tour with Béla Fleck. Kouyaté’s wife, Amy Sacko, is also a successful solo artist and sings lead in his band. His father Mustapha Kouyaté was a ngoni player and his mother Yagaré Damba was a praise singer.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk (August 7, 1935 – December 5, 1977) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played tenor saxophone, flute, and many other instruments. He was renowned for his onstage vitality, during which virtuoso improvisation was accompanied by comic banter, political ranting, and the ability to play several instruments simultaneously.

Kirk was born Ronald Theodore Kirk in Columbus, Ohio, where he lived in a neighborhood known as Flytown. He became blind at two years old, which he said was a result of improper medical treatment. As a teenager, Kirk studied at the Ohio State School for the Blind. By fifteen he was on the road playing rhythm and blues on weekends with Boyd Moore’s band. According to saxophonist Hank Crawford, “He would be like this 14 year-old blind kid playing two horns at once. They would bring him out and he would tear the joint up.” Hank heard him and said he was unbelievable when as a youth. “Now they had him doing all kinds of goofy stuff but he was playing the two horns and he was playing the shit out of them. He was an original from the beginning.” Kirk felt compelled by a dream to transpose two letters in his first name to make ‘”Roland”.^[2] In 1970, Kirk added “Rahsaan” to his name after hearing it in a dream. Kirk’s musical career spans from 1955 until his death in 1977. He preferred to lead his own bands and rarely performed as a sideman, although he did record with arranger Quincy Jones, drummer Roy Haynes and worked with bassist Charles Mingus. One of his best-known recorded performances is the lead flute and solo on Jones’ “Soul Bossa Nova“, a 1964 hit song repopularized in the Austin Powers films.

Idrees Sulieman (August 7, 1923 – July 23, 2002, both in St. Petersburg, Florida) was a bop and hard bop trumpeter.

He was born Leonard Graham on 7 August 1923, later changing his name to Idrees Sulieman after converting to Islam. He studied at the Boston Conservatory, and gained early experience playing with the Carolina Cotton Pickers and the wartime Earl Hines Orchestra (1943–1944). On October 15, 1947, on what was Suliman’s second recording date (source: liner notes by Michael Cuscuna to The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Thelonious Monk) he played on Thelonious Monk’s first recording for Blue Note Records. Sulieman was closely associated with Mary Lou Williamsand for a time and had stints with Cab Calloway, John Coltrane, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton. Sulieman recorded with Coleman Hawkins (1957) and gigged with Randy Weston (1958–1959), in addition to appearing in many other situations. He toured Europe in 1961 with Oscar Dennard, and stayed, settling in Stockholm at first, and then moved to Copenhagen in 1964. A soloist with the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band from the mid-’60s through 1973, Sulieman frequently worked with radio orchestras. His recordings as a leader were for Swedish Columbia (1964) and SteepleChase (1976 and 1985). In 1985, he was among the performers on Miles Davis‘ album Aura, which was not released until 1989. Sulieman’s career slowed down considerably in the 1990s.

IC 2497 is a spiral galaxy close to the intergalactic cloud Hanny’s Voorwerp.

IC 2497 is a former quasar, whose light lit up Hanny’s Voorwerp, which is now a light echo of that extinct quasar. It is about 45,000–70,000 light-years (14,000–21,000 pc) away from Hanny’s Voorwerp. The quasar shut down sometime in the last 70,000 years. This revises current theories of quasar operation, as the quasar is quiescent, shutting down much faster than was thought possible, and is much cooler than predicted. The galaxy is currently 100 to 10,000 times dimmer than it was when its quasar burned into Hanny’s Voorwerp. It is currently the nearest known quasar, being 730 million light years away, and the one with the best view of its host galaxy. The nearest active quasar is 3C 273, 1.7 billion light years further away.

New data from Chandra and other telescopes of a cosmic ‘blob’ and a gas bubble could be a new way to probe the past activity of a giant black hole and its effect on its host galaxy. Hanny’s Voorwerp, first discovered by a citizen scientist, is a gas cloud located next to the galaxy IC 2497. Astronomers think the giant black hole in IC 2497 used to power a quasar, generating radiation that illuminated Hanny’s Voorwerp. Within the last 200,000 years the quasar has faded. The Chandra data suggest that jets powered by the black hole have blown a bubble in surrounding gas.

Charles Edward Haden (August 6, 1937 – July 11, 2014) was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than fifty years. In the late 1950s, Haden was an original member of the ground-breaking Ornette Coleman Quartet.

Haden revolutionized the harmonic concept of bass playing in jazz. German musicologist Joachim-Ernst Berendt wrote that Haden’s “ability to create serendipitous harmonies by improvising melodic responses to Coleman’s free-form solos (rather than sticking to predetermined harmonies) was both radical and mesmerizing. His virtuosity lies…in an incredible ability to make the double bass ‘sound out’. Haden cultivated the instrument’s gravity as no one else in jazz. He is a master of simplicity which is one of the most difficult things to achieve.”) Haden played a vital role in this revolutionary new approach, evolving a way of playing that sometimes complemented the soloist and sometimes moved independently. In this respect, as did his predecessor bassists Jimmy Blanton and Charles Mingus, Haden helped liberate the bassist from a strictly accompanying role to becoming a more direct participant in group improvisation. In 1969, he formed his first band, the Liberation Music Orchestra, featuring arrangements by pianist Carla Bley. In the late 1960s, he became a member of pianist Keith Jarrett’s trio, quartet and quintet. In the 1980s, he formed his band, Quartet West. Haden also often recorded and performed in a duo setting, with musicians including guitarist Pat Metheny and pianist Hank Jones.

Haden was born in Shenandoah, Iowa. His family was exceptionally musical and performed on the radio as the Haden Family, playing country musicand American folk songs. Haden made his professional debut as a singer on the Haden Family’s radio show when he was just two years old. He continued singing with his family until he was 15 when he contracted a bulbar form of polio affecting his throat and facial muscles. At the age of 14, Haden had become interested in jazz after hearing Charlie Parker and Stan Kenton in concert. Once he recovered from his bout with polio, Haden began in earnest to concentrate on playing the bass. Haden’s interest in the instrument was not sparked by jazz bass alone, but also by the harmonies and chords he heard in compositions by Bach. Haden soon set his sights on moving to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz musician, and to save money for the trip, took a job as house bassist for ABC-TV’s Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCLoQIt6LNM

Anna Marie Wooldridge (August 6, 1930 – August 14, 2010), known by her stage name Abbey Lincoln, was an American jazz vocalist, songwriter, and actress, who wrote and performed her own compositions. She was a civil rights advocate and activist from the 1960s on. Lincoln made a career not only out of delivering deeply felt presentations of standards but writing and singing her own material as well. Born in Chicago but raised in Calvin Center, Cass County, Michigan, Lincoln was one of many singers influenced by Billie Holiday. She often visited the Blue Note jazz club in New York City. Her debut album, Abbey Lincoln’s Affair – A Story of a Girl in Love, was followed by a series of albums for Riverside Records. In 1960 she sang on Max Roach‘s landmark civil rights-themed recording, We Insist! Lincoln’s lyrics were often connected to the civil rights movement in America. After a tour of Africa in the mid-1970s, she adopted the name Aminata Moseka.

During the 1980s, Lincoln’s creative output was smaller and she released only a few albums during that decade. Her song “For All We Know” is featured in the 1989 film Drugstore Cowboy. During the 1990s and until her death, however, she fulfilled a 10-album contract with Verve Records. These albums are highly regarded and represent a crowning achievement in Lincoln’s career. Devil’s Got Your Tongue (1992) featured Rodney Kendrick, Grady Tate, Yoron Israel, J. J. Johnson, Stanley Turrentine, Babatunde Olatunji and The Staple Singers, among others. In 2003, Lincoln received a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Award.