the International Space Station (ISS) caught passing in front of the Sun. Sunspots, individually, have a dark central umbra, a lighter surrounding penumbra, and no solar panels. By contrast, the ISS is a complex and multi-spired mechanism, one of the largest and most sophisticated machines ever created by humanity. Also, sunspots occur on the Sun, whereas the ISS orbits the Earth. Transiting the Sun is not very unusual for the ISS, which orbits the Earth about every 90 minutes, but getting one’s timing and equipment just right for a great image is rare. Strangely, besides that fake spot, in this recent two-image composite, the Sun lacked any real sunspots. The featured picture combines two images — one capturing the space station transiting the Sun — and another taken consecutively capturing details of the Sun’s surface. Sunspots have been rare on the Sun since the dawn of the current Solar Minimum, a period of low solar activity. For reasons not yet fully understood, the number of sunspots occurring during both the previous and current solar minima have been unusually low.

Julian Alexander Bream, CBE (born 15 July 1933), is an English virtuoso classical guitarist and lutenist. One of the most distinguished classical guitarists of the 20th century, he played a significant role in improving the public perception of the classical guitar as a respectable instrument.

Bream was born in Battersea, London, and brought up in a musical environment in Hampton. Bream described his parents as both “conventional suburban”, but in another way “very unusual”. His father was a commercial artist, with an “extraordinary talent for drawing” and a “natural musician” according to Bream. Bream would lie under the piano in “ecstasy” when his father played. His mother, of Scottish descent, was a very beautiful woman who was often, according to Bream, “not always there” mentally and did not like music, but was a warm-hearted person. His grandmother owned a pub in Battersea, and Bream spent much time there during his youth. His father played jazz guitar and the young Bream was impressed by hearing the playing of Django Reinhardt; he would later call his dog “Django”.

Bream began his lifelong association with the guitar by strumming along on his father’s jazz guitar at an early age to dance music on the radio. He became frustrated with his lack of knowledge of harmony, so read instruction books by Eddie Lang to teach himself. His father taught him the basics. The president of the Philharmonic Society of Guitars, Dr Boris Perott, gave Bream further lessons, while his father became the society librarian, giving young Bream access to a large collection of rare music.

On his 11th birthday, Bream was given a small gut-strung Spanish guitar by his father. He became something of a child prodigy, at 12 winning a junior exhibition award for his piano playing, enabling him to study piano and composition at the Royal College of Music. Aged 13, he made his debut guitar recital at Cheltenham on 17 February 1947; in 1951, he debuted at Wigmore Hall.

Joseph Rudolph “Philly Joe” Jones (July 15, 1923 – August 30, 1985) was an American jazz drummer, known as the drummer for the first “Great” Miles Davis Quintet. He should not be confused with “Papa” Jo Jones, another drummer who had a long tenure with Count Basie. The two men died only a few days apart. As a child, Jones appeared as a featured tap dancer on The Kiddie Show on the Philadelphia radio Station WIP. He was in the US Army during World War II.

In 1947 he became the house drummer at Café Society in New York City, where he played with the leading bebop players of the day. Among them, the most important influence on Jones was Tadd Dameron. Jones toured and recorded with Miles Davis Quintet from 1955 to 1958—a band that became known as “The Quintet” (along with Red Garland on piano, John Coltrane on sax, and Paul Chambers on bass). Davis acknowledged that Jones was his favorite drummer, and stated in his autobiography that he would always listen for Jones in other drummers.

From 1958 Jones worked as a leader, but continued to work as a sideman with other musicians, including Bill Evans and Hank Mobley. Evans, like Davis, also openly stated that Jones was his all-time favorite drummer.

Robert Clifford Brown (July 15, 1910 – November 6, 1966), known professionally as Washboard Sam, was an American blues musician and singer.

Brown’s date and place of birth are uncertain; many sources state that he was born in 1910 in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest that he was born in 1903 or 1904, in Jackson, Tennessee, on the basis of Social Security information. He was reputedly the half-brother of Big Bill Broonzy. He moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1920s, performing as a street musician with Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon.He moved to Chicago in 1932, performing regularly with Broonzy and other musicians, including Memphis Slim and Tampa Red, in many recording sessions for Lester Melrose of Bluebird Records.

In 1935, he began recording in his own right for both Bluebird and Vocalion Records, becoming one of the most popular Chicago blues performers of the late 1930s and 1940s, selling numerous records and playing to packed audiences. He recorded over 160 tracks in those decades. His strong voice and songwriting talent overcame his stylistic limitations.

NGC 3147 is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Draco. It is located at a distance of circa 130 million light years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that NGC 3147 is about 140,000 light years across. It was discovered by William Herschel οn April 3, 1785. It is a Type II Seyfert galaxy.

Hubble Uncovers Black Hole Disk that Shouldn’t Exist

As if black holes weren’t mysterious enough, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found an unexpected thin disk of material furiously whirling around a supermassive black hole at the heart of the magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 3147, located 130 million light-years away.

The conundrum is that the disk shouldn’t be there, based on current astronomical theories. However, the unexpected presence of a disk so close to a black hole offers a unique opportunity to test Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity. General relativity describes gravity as the curvature of space and special relativity describes the relationship between time and space.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/hubble-uncovers-black-hole-that-shouldnt-exist

The shape and structure of this Spiral galaxy are plainly visible thanks to this perspective. Galaxy NGC 3147 galaxy is relatively close by, at a distance of roughly 130 million light-years, and can be found in the constellation of Draco (The Dragon).

Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo, known as Angélique Kidjo (born July 14, 1960), is a Beninese–American singer-songwriter, actress, and activist who is noted for her diverse musical influences and creative music videos. Time magazine has called her “Africa’s premier diva”. The BBC has included Kidjo in its list of the African continent’s 50 most iconic figures.The Guardian has listed her as one of its Top 100 Most Inspiring Women in the World and Kidjo is the first woman to be listed among “The 40 Most Powerful Celebrities in Africa” by Forbes magazine. The Daily Telegraph in London described her as “The undisputed queen of African music” during the 2012 Olympic Games River of Music Festival. In March 2013, National Public Radio (NPR) in America, called her “Africa’s greatest living diva”. Kidjo is listed among the “2014 Most Influential Africans” by New African magazine and Jeune Afrique. Forbes Afrique put Kidjo on the cover of their “100 most influential women” issue in 2015. On June 6, 2013, Kidjo was elected vice-president of the Confédération Internationale des Sociétés d´Auteurs et Compositeurs (CISAC). She now resides in New York City, where she is an occasional contributor to The New York Times. Kidjo has received Honorary Doctorates from Yale University, Berklee College of Music and Middlebury College. She is the 2018 Harvard UniversityJazz Master In Residence.

Her musical influences include the Afropop, Caribbean zouk, Congolese rumba, jazz, gospel, and Latin styles; as well as her childhood idols Bella Bellow, James Brown, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Miriam Makeba and Carlos Santana. She has recorded George Gershwin’s “Summertime“, Ravel’s Boléro, Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” and the Rolling Stones‘ “Gimme Shelter“, and has collaborated with Dave Matthews and the Dave Matthews Band, Kelly Price, Alicia Keys, Branford Marsalis, Ziggy Marley, Philip Glass, Peter Gabriel, Bono, Carlos Santana, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Josh Groban, Dr John, the Kronos Quartet and Cassandra Wilson. Kidjo’s hit songs include “Agolo”, “We We”, “Adouma”, “Wombo Lombo”, “Afirika”, “Batonga“, and her version of “Malaika“. Her album Logozo is ranked number 37 in the Greatest Dance Albums of All Time list compiled by Vice magazine’s Thump website.

Kidjo is fluent in five languages: Fon, French, Yorùbá, Gen (Mina), and English. She sings in all of them, and she also has her own personal language, which includes words that serve as song titles such as “Batonga”. “Malaika” is a song sung in the Swahili language. Kidjo often uses Benin’s traditional Zilin vocal technique and vocalese.

Kidjo is the recipient of the 2015 Crystal Award given by the World Economic Forum of Davos in Switzerland and has received the Ambassador Of Conscience Award from Amnesty International in 2016 She also is included in the exhibits at the National Museum of African American History that opened on Sept. 24, 2016 on the National Mall.

Kenneth “Kenny” Napper (born July 14, 1933 in London) is an English jazz double-bassist.

Napper started out on piano as a child and picked up bass as a student at Guildhall School of Music. He entered the British military in the early 1950s, playing with Mary Lou Williams in 1953 during a leave period. After ending his term of duty, he played with Jack Parnell, Malcolm Mitchell, Vic Ash, and Cab Calloway. He was the house bassist at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club for several years and played with many British and American jazz musicians in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including Alan Clare, Ronnie Scott, Stan Tracey, Tubby Hayes, Tony Kinsey, Tony Crombie, Jimmy Deuchar, John Dankworth, Pat Smythe, Phil Seamen, Zoot Sims, Carmen McRae, and Paul Gonsalves. Later in the 1960s he worked with Ted Heath, Tony Coe, John Picard, and Barney Kessel, as well as with Gonsalves, Tracey, and Dankworth. In 1970 he played with Stephane Grappelli and moved to Germany, playing with Kurt Edelhagen from 1970 to 1972. While in Germany he focused more on composition and arrangement; later in the decade he moved to the Netherlands, where he arranged for radio ensembles.

Alan Dawson (July 14, 1929 – February 23, 1996) was a respected jazz drummer and widely influential percussion teacher based in Boston.

Dawson is best remembered as an early teacher of Tony Williams, and Sawyer Brown drummer, Joseph Smyth. Other former students include: Terri Lyne Carrington, Julian Vaughn, Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Smith, Kenwood Dennard, Gerry Hemingway, Jeff Sipe, Billy Kilson, and many others. He began teaching at Berklee College of Music in 1957. Dawson suffered a ruptured disc in 1975 which led to him halting his touring schedule, to leave Berklee and limit his teaching to his home in Lexington, Massachusetts.

His teaching style emphasized the music as a whole rather than concentrate on percussion alone. He stressed the importance of learning the melody and structure of the tune to better fulfill the role of accompaniment. For this purpose, he had students play over standards while also singing the melody out loud. He constantly strived for balance between musical ideas and strict technique. He was big on rudiments and wrote extensive exercises intended to be practiced with brushes. He believed using brushes with his “Rudimental Ritual” would reduce stick rebound allowing the sense of “picking up” the sticks. While teaching, Alan also maintained a prolific performing and recording career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm_qWpvjvm4

Messier 108 (also known as NGC 3556) is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781 or 1782. From the perspective of the Earth, this galaxy is seen almost edge-on.

This galaxy is an isolated member of the Ursa Major Cluster of galaxies in the Virgo supercluster. It has a morphological classification of type SBbc in the de Vaucouleurs system, which means it is a barred spiral galaxy with somewhat loosely wound arms. The maximum angular size of the galaxy in the optical band is 11′.1 × 4′.6, and it is inclined 75° to the line of sight.

This galaxy has an estimated mass of 125 billion times the mass of the Sun and includes about 290 ± 80 globular clusters. Examination of the distribution of neutral hydrogen in this galaxy shows shells of expanding gas extending for several kiloparsecs, known as H1 supershells. These may be driven by bursts of star formation activity, resulting in supernovae explosions. Alternatively they may result from an infall of gas from outside the galaxy or by radio jets.

Observations with the Chandra X-ray Observatory have identified 83 X-ray sources, including a source located at the nucleus. The brightest of these sources may be an intermediate-mass black hole that is accreting matter. The galaxy is also emitting a diffuse soft X-ray radiation within 10 kpc of the optical galaxy. The spectrum of the X-ray source at the core is consistent with an active galactic nucleus, but an examination with the Spitzer Space Telescope shows no indication of activity. The supermassive black hole at the core has an estimated mass equal to 24 million times the mass of the Sun.

Albert Ayler (/ˈaɪlər/; July 13, 1936 – November 25, 1970) was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer. After early experience playing R&B and bebop, Ayler began recording music during the free jazz era of the 1960s. However, some critics argue that while Ayler’s style is undeniably original and unorthodox, it does not adhere to the generally accepted critical understanding of free jazz. In fact, Ayler’s style is difficult to categorize in any way, and it evoked incredibly strong and disparate reactions from critics and fans alike. His innovations have inspired subsequent jazz musicians.

His trio and quartet records of 1964, such as Spiritual Unity and The Hilversum Session, show him advancing the improvisational notions of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman into abstract realms where whole timbre, and not just mainly harmony with melody, is the music’s backbone. His ecstatic music of 1965 and 1966, such as “Spirits Rejoice” and “Truth Is Marching In”, has been compared by critics to the sound of a brass band, and involved simple, march-like themes which alternated with wild group improvisations and were regarded as retrieving jazz’s pre-Louis Armstrongroots. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Ayler was first taught alto saxophone by his father Edward, who was a semiprofessional saxophonist and violinist. Edward and Albert played alto saxophone duets in church and often listened to jazz records together, including swing era jazz and then-new bop albums.Ayler’s upbringing in the church had a great impact on his life and music, and much of his music can be understood as an attempt to express his spirituality, including the aptly titled Spiritual Unity, and his album of spirituals, Goin’ Home, which features “meandering” solos that are meant to be treated as meditations on sacred texts, and at some points as “speaking in tongues” with his saxophone.

Peter Michael Escovedo (born July 13, 1935 in Pittsburg, California) is a Mexican-American percussionist.

With his two brothers, Pete formed Escovedo Bros Latin Jazz Sextet, before Carlos Santana hired Pete and Coke Escovedo for his group. He led the 14–24 piece Latin big band Azteca.

He is the father of musicians Sheila Escovedo (Sheila E.), Peter Michael Escovedo, and Juan Escovedo; and dancer, manager and promoter Zina Escovedo. His brothers are fellow recording artists Alejandro Escovedo, Coke Escovedo, Javier Escovedo (The Zeros), Bobby Escovedo, and Mario Escovedo (The Dragons). He is the biological grandfather of Nicole Richie, daughter of son Peter Michael Escovedo.

Escovedo participated in the San Francisco music scene for several decades. In 2002, he appeared on the “By the Hand of the Father” episode of the PBS series Austin City Limits.

Leroy Vinnegar (July 13, 1928 – August 3, 1999) was an American jazz bassist. Born in Indianapolis, the self-taught Vinnegar established his reputation in Los Angeles during the 1950s and 1960s. His trademark was the rhythmic “walking” bass line, a steady series of ascending or descending notes, and it brought him the nickname “The Walker”. Besides his jazz work, he also appeared on a number of soundtracks and pop albums, notably Van Morrison‘s 1972 album, Saint Dominic’s Preview.  He recorded extensively as both a leader and sideman. He came to public attention in the 1950s as a result of recording with Lee Konitz, André Previn, Stan Getz, Shorty Rogers, Chet Baker, Shelly Manne, Joe Castro and Serge Chaloff.

He played bass on Previn and Manne’s My Fair Lady album, one of the most successful jazz records ever produced. He also performed on another of jazz’s biggest hit albums, Eddie Harris and Les McCann‘s Swiss Movement, released in 1969. Vinnegar also performed at the famous Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California, and Diggers in East Los Angeles in the late 1950s with drummer/pianist Don Joham along with other musicians. He moved to Portland, Oregon in 1986. In 1995, the Oregon State Legislature honored him by proclaiming May 1 Leroy Vinnegar Day.

Vinnegar died of a heart attack, at the age of 71, on August 3, 1999, in a hospital in Portland.