mick laBriola

Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday made a significant contribution to jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly influenced by jazz instrumentalists, inspired a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.

After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem where she was heard by producer John Hammond, who liked her voice. She signed a recording contract with Brunswick in 1935. Her collaboration with Teddy Wilson produced the hit “What a Little Moonlight Can Do“, which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a short prison sentence, she performed a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. She was a successful concert performer throughout the 1950s, with two further sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall. Because of personal struggles and an altered voice, her final recordings were met with mixed reaction, but were mild commercial successes. Her final album, Lady in Satin, was released in 1958. Holiday died of heart failure on July 17, 1959, at age 44.

Holiday won four Grammy Awards, all of them posthumously, for Best Historical Album. She was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. In 2000, she was also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence; their website states that “Billie Holiday changed jazz forever”. She was named one of the 50 Great Voices by NPR and was ranked fourth on the Rolling Stonelist of “200 Greatest Singers of All Time” (2023). Several films about her life have been released, most recently The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021).

Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019), also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and writer. His best-selling 1971 book Be Here Now, which has been described by multiple reviewers as “seminal”, helped popularize Eastern spirituality and yoga in the West. He authored or co-authored twelve more books on spirituality over the next four decades, including Grist for the Mill (1977), How Can I Help? (1985), and Polishing the Mirror (2013).

Ram Dass was personally and professionally associated with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s. Then known as Richard Alpert, he conducted research with Leary on the therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs. In addition, Alpert assisted Harvard Divinity School graduate student Walter Pahnke in his 1962 “Good Friday Experiment” with theology students, the first controlled, double-blind study of drugs and the mystical experience. While not illegal at the time, their research was controversial and led to Leary’s and Alpert’s dismissal from Harvard in 1963.

In 1967, Alpert traveled to India and became a disciple of Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass, meaning “Servant of Ram,” but usually rendered simply as “Servant of God” for Western audiences. In the following years, he co-founded the charitable organizations Seva Foundation and Hanuman Foundation. From the 1970s to the 1990s, he traveled extensively, giving talks and retreats and holding fundraisers for charitable causes. In 1997, he had a stroke, which left him with paralysis and expressive aphasia. He eventually grew to interpret this event as an act of grace, learning to speak again and continuing to teach and write books. After becoming seriously ill during a trip to India in 2004, he gave up traveling and moved to Maui, Hawaii, where he hosted annual retreats with other spiritual teachers until his death in 2019.

Happy Birthday Carson
My oldest grandson turns 18 yrs old today Wow!
Carson lives in Pittsburgh.
Love you Carson

Sunday April 6th 2025 7pm. Performing tonight with Ahmed Yusuf and Ahmed Mohamed and several Somali singers. Pictured in my rehearsal studio.

“Meet You at the Crossroads.” The concert is co-produced by the University of St. Thomas’ Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies and the Cultural Fluency Initiative. In the Schoenecker Science Center Performance Hall.

In a Minneapolis rehearsal room, a group of Somali musicians gathers in a circle, playing music rooted in the cafés of Mogadishu. The sound is emotional, rhythmic and steeped in memory. It’s called “Somali blues.”

“The lyrics are just showing you what it means,” says Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, the group’s leader. The style is similar to what you might have heard in Somalia before the civil war.

“It is this lugubrious, lamentation [of] love not returned.”

Yusuf and the small outfit — called Araa — are rehearsing for an upcoming concert, “Meet You at the Crossroads.” The concert is co-produced by the University of St. Thomas’ Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies and the Cultural Fluency Initiative.

“This is really about the life of the city. There are more cultural groups in the Twin Cities than ever,” said David Jordan Harris, who works with the Jay Phillips Center and curated the concert. “Yet, do we know each other? How do we learn about each other? And you know, no better method than our musical traditions.”

“Meet You at the Crossroads” will bring together Somali blues and songs inspired by Black gospel music. The idea came from a previous experiment Harris developed with Beck Lee, who runs the Cultural Fluency Initiative.

“We did sort of a proof of concept concert salon a little while ago where we where we juxtaposed Sephardic music and Somali music,” Lee said. “It was just interesting to be able to experience those two musical cultures and juxtaposition and talk about it.”

This time, Lee and Harris invited Yusuf to lead the Somali music, and JD Steele to bring the Black soul repertoire.

It’s galaxy season, and two of my favorites are M81 (upper left) and M82 (lower right), a pair of galaxies located in the constellation, Ursa Major. M81 (Bode’s Galaxy) is a face-on spiral galaxy, about half the diameter of our Milky Way, and lies approximately 11.8 million light-years away, while M82 (The Cigar Galaxy) is an irregular edge-on galaxy at roughly the same distance. These galaxies have a gravitational lock on each other and interact, affecting the shape and composition of one another. This image was shot last night, over about 6 hours, from our front yard with the telescope in the shadow of the nearly full moon.

Sign me up!

Performing with Somali Blues this Sunday April 6th 7pm at “Meet You at the Crossroads.” The concert is co-produced by the University of St. Thomas’ Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies and the Cultural Fluency Initiative. In the Schoenecker Science Center Performance Hall.

In a Minneapolis rehearsal room, a group of Somali musicians gathers in a circle, playing music rooted in the cafés of Mogadishu. The sound is emotional, rhythmic and steeped in memory. It’s called “Somali blues.”

“The lyrics are just showing you what it means,” says Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, the group’s leader. The style is similar to what you might have heard in Somalia before the civil war.

“It is this lugubrious, lamentation [of] love not returned.”

Yusuf and the small outfit — called Araa — are rehearsing for an upcoming concert, “Meet You at the Crossroads.” The concert is co-produced by the University of St. Thomas’ Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies and the Cultural Fluency Initiative.

“This is really about the life of the city. There are more cultural groups in the Twin Cities than ever,” said David Jordan Harris, who works with the Jay Phillips Center and curated the concert. “Yet, do we know each other? How do we learn about each other? And you know, no better method than our musical traditions.”

“Meet You at the Crossroads” will bring together Somali blues and songs inspired by Black gospel music. The idea came from a previous experiment Harris developed with Beck Lee, who runs the Cultural Fluency Initiative.

“We did sort of a proof of concept concert salon a little while ago where we where we juxtaposed Sephardic music and Somali music,” Lee said. “It was just interesting to be able to experience those two musical cultures and juxtaposition and talk about it.”

This time, Lee and Harris invited Yusuf to lead the Somali music, and JD Steele to bring the Black soul repertoire.