mick laBriola

Usually astronomers have to look at galaxies billions of light-years away to study how galaxies form, because light from those galaxies takes billions of years to reach us. But UGC 5340, a bizarre dwarf galaxy only 40 million light-years away, looks surprisingly young for a galaxy so close by. Astronomers aren’t sure if UGC 5340 is as young as it appears, or if its looks might be deceiving. The Hubble Space Telescope captured this view of UGC 5340 as part of the Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey, which studies nearby star-forming galaxies in ultraviolet light.

Lonnie Smith (born July 3, 1942), styled Dr. Lonnie Smith, is an American jazz Hammond B3 organist.

He was born in Lackawanna, New York, into a family with a vocal group and radio program. Smith says that his mother was a major influence on him musically, as she introduced him to gospel, classical, and jazz music. He was part of several vocal ensembles in the 1950s, including the Teen Kings which included Grover Washington Jr., on sax and his brother Daryl on drums.

After recording several albums with Benson, Smith became a solo recording artist and has since recorded over 30 albums under his own name. Numerous prominent jazz artists have joined Smith on his albums and in his live performances, including Lee Morgan, David “Fathead” Newman, King Curtis, Terry Bradds, Blue Mitchell, Joey DeFrancesco and Joe Lovano.

In 1967, Smith met Lou Donaldson, who put him in contact with Blue Note Records. Donaldson asked the quartet to record an album for Blue Note, Alligator Bogaloo. Blue Note signed Smith for the next four albums, all in the soul jazz style, including Think (with Lee Morgan, David Newman, Melvin Sparks and Marion Booker) and Turning Point (with Lee Morgan, Bennie Maupin, Melvin Sparks and Idris Muhammad).

Johnny Coles (July 3, 1926 in Trenton, New Jersey – December 21, 1997 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was an American jazz trumpeter.

Coles spent his early career playing with R&B groups, including those of Eddie Vinson (1948–1951), Bull Moose Jackson (1952), and Earl Bostic (1955–1956). He was with James Moody from 1956 to 1958, and played with Gil Evans‘s orchestra between 1958 and 1964, including on the Miles Davis album Sketches of Spain. After this he spent time with Charles Mingus in his sextet which also included Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, Jaki Byard, and Dannie Richmond. Following this he played with Herbie Hancock (1968–1969), Ray Charles (1969–1971), Duke Ellington (1971–1974), Art Blakey (1976), Dameronia, Mingus Dynasty, and the Count Basie Orchestra under the direction of Thad Jones (1985–1986).

Coles, nicknamed “Little Johnny C”, recorded as a leader several times over the course of his career. He died of cancer in 1997.

Their home base is in Sydney, Australia but their sound is classic eastern European. There’s lots of galloping rhythms, brimming brass, swirling reeds and strings and yes, that Gypsy thing again. Singer Nadya Golski (originally from Poland) and Bosnian guitarist/musical director Giga Mirsad Jeleskovic are the guiding forces here, having their act together on all fronts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh4awyMULOU

Behold one of the most photogenic regions of the night sky, captured impressively. Featured, the band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs diagonally along the far left, while the colorful Rho Ophiuchus region including the bright orange star Antares is visible just right of center, and the nebula Sharpless 1 (Sh2-1) appears on the far right. Visible in front of the Milk Way band are several famous nebulas including the Eagle Nebula (M16), the Trifid Nebula (M21), and the Lagoon Nebula (M8). Other notable nebulas include the Pipe and Blue Horsehead. In general, red emanates from nebulas glowing in the light of exited hydrogen gas, while blue marks interstellar dust preferentially reflecting the light of bright young stars. Thick dust appears otherwise dark brown. Large balls of stars visible include the globular clusters M4, M9, M19, M28, and M80, each marked on the annotated companion image. This extremely wide field — about 50 degrees across — spans the constellations of Sagittarius is on the lower left, Serpens on the upper left, Ophiuchus across the middle, and Scorpius on the right. It took over 100 hours of sky imaging, combined with meticulous planning and digital processing, to create this image.

Charles Robert Watts (born 2 June 1941) is an English drummer, best known as a member of the Rolling Stones. Originally trained as a graphic artist, he started playing drums in London’s rhythm and blues clubs, where he met Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards. In 1963, he joined their group, the Rolling Stones, as drummer, while doubling as designer of their record sleeves and tour stages. He has also toured with his own group, the Charlie Watts Quintet, and appeared at London’s prestigious Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club with the Charlie Watts Tentet.

In 2006, Watts was elected into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame; in the same year, Vanity Fair elected him into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame. In the estimation of noted music critic Robert Christgau, Watts is “rock’s greatest drummer.” In 2016, he was ranked 12th on Rolling Stone‘s “100 Greatest Drummers of All Time” list.

Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones, July 2, 1930) is an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. For five decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz.

Jamal was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots have remained an important part of his identity (“Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does,” he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner.

Born in 1950, master drummer Mamady Keita comes from eastern Guinea, once a part of the vast Manding Empire. In pre-colonial times it also included large portions of what are now Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Burkina Faso.

At his birth, a soothsayer predicted Keita would become known all over Africa and even in “countries of which we’ve never heard spoken!” By age fourteen he was a professional, traveling around Guinea learning new rhythms. And as foretold, in 1965 a teenage Keita began touring the globe with the Guinean Ballet.

The winner of the student division of Australia’s 2013 Gemini Astronomy Contest was Isobelle Teljega, who was in Year 8 at St. Margaret’s Anglican Girls School in the Brisbane suburb of Ascot, Queensland, Australia. Her entry was submitted for her by Chris Farrelly, who is the Head of Faculty – Science. The school’s Astronomy Club, which Mr. Farrelly supervises, had been a contest runner-up each of the previous two years.

Isobelle’s contest entry had suggested that Gemini South obtain an image of the galaxy IC 5332, which is a large face-on spiral galaxy within the constellation Sculptor. In addition, the image contains a cluster of galaxies in the distant background.

IC 5332, also known as PGC 71775 is a spiral galaxy about 39 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. IC 5332 is a delicate spiral galaxy that is unusually faint and beautifully symmetrical. As viewed from earth it is nearly face on. It has a very small central bulge and open spiral arms accounting for its classification (Sc). The galaxy lies in the direction of the celestial south pole.

IC 5332 is a late type spiral galaxy with observable star formation ongoing, though at such a low rate as to be a stable non-starburst galaxy. It is a somewhat tenuous spiral galaxy with a very low surface brightness of just 23.8 mag/squ arc sec.

Leon “Ndugu” Chancler (/ɪnˈduːɡuː ˈtʃænslər/ in-DOO-goo CHANSS-lər; July 1, 1952 – February 3, 2018) was a world-renowned American pop, funk and jazz drummer. He further developed his skills and shared his talent as a studio musician, composer, producer and university professor.

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on July 1 1952, Leon Ndugu Chancler was the last child of seven children from the union of Rosie Lee and Henry Nathaniel Chancler. In 1960 the family relocated to Los Angeles, California. Chancler began playing drums when he was thirteen years old. He would publicly reminisce about being asked to leave a classroom for continuously tapping on the desk, only to be later heard tapping on the poles in the hallway. His love for the drums took over while attending Gompers Junior High School and it became his lifelong ambition. He graduated from Locke High School having been heavily involved in playing there with Willie Bobo and the Harold Johnson Sextet. He graduated from California State University, Dominguez Hills with a degree in music education. By then he had already performed with the Gerald Wilson Big Band, Herbie Hancock, and recorded with Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, and Bobby Hutcherson.

He recorded as a sideman in jazz, blues, and pop music, including the iconic and instantly recognizable drums on “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson.

James Henry Cotton (July 1, 1935 – March 16, 2017) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, who performed and recorded with many of the great blues artists of his time and with his own band. He played drums early in his career but is famous for his harmonica playing.

Cotton began his professional career playing the blues harp in Howlin’ Wolf‘s band in the early 1950s. He made his first recordings in Memphis for Sun Records, under the direction of Sam Phillips. In 1955, he was recruited by Muddy Waters to come to Chicago and join his band. Cotton became Waters’s bandleader and stayed with the group until 1965. In 1965 he formed the Jimmy Cotton Blues Quartet, with Otis Spann on piano, to record between gigs with the Muddy Waters band. He eventually left to form his own full-time touring group. His first full album, on Verve Records, was produced by the guitarist Mike Bloomfield and the singer and songwriter Nick Gravenites, who later were members of the band Electric Flag.

Cotton was born in Tunica, Mississippi. He became interested in music when he first heard Sonny Boy Williamson II on the radio. He left home with his uncle and moved to West Helena, Arkansas, finding Williamson there. For many years Cotton claimed that he told Williamson that he was an orphan and that Williamson took him in and raised him, a story he admitted in recent years is not true. However, Williamson did mentor Cotton during his early years.

William James Dixon (July 1, 1915 – January 29, 1992) was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. He was proficient in playing both the upright bass and the guitar, and sang with a distinctive voice, but he is perhaps best known as one of the most prolific songwriters of his time. Next to Muddy Waters, Dixon is recognized as the most influential person in shaping the post–World War II sound of the Chicago blues.

Dixon’s songs have been recorded by countless musicians in many genres as well as by various ensembles in which he participated. A short list of his most famous compositions includes “Hoochie Coochie Man“, “I Just Want to Make Love to You“, “Little Red Rooster“, “My Babe“, “Spoonful“, and “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover“. These songs were written during the peak years of Chess Records, from 1950 to 1965, and were performed by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, and Bo Diddley; they influenced a generation of musicians worldwide.

Dixon was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 1, 1915. His mother, Daisy, often rhymed things she said, a habit her son imitated. At the age of seven, young Dixon became an admirer of a band that featured pianist Little Brother Montgomery. He sang his first song at Springfield Baptist Church at the age of four.

The Orion Nebula is arguably the finest of all nebulae within the Milky Way visible from the Northern Hemisphere. With a gaseous repository of 10,000 suns, and illuminated by a cluster of hot young stars, the clouds of Messier 42 — as it is also known — glow with fantastic colours and shapes, giving us a bird’s eye view of one of the greatest star forming nurseries in our part of the Milky Way. Messier 42 is a complex of glowing gas, mostly hydrogen but also helium, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in decreasing amounts, located 1,500 light-years away. At its very heart, we find the Trapezium, a group of four very hot stars that illuminate the nebula. They are the brightest of an extended cluster of several thousand young stars many of which lie unseen within the opaque gas and dust. Amazingly, whilst the Orion Nebula is easy to identify with the unaided eye, there is apparently no written record of its existence before the 17th century.

This image is based on data acquired with the 1.5 m Danish telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile, through three filters (B: 60 s, V: 30 s, R: 21 s). East is at the upper right corner and North is at the lower right.

Stanley Clarke (born June 30, 1951) is an American bassist and founding member of Return to Forever, one of the first jazz fusion bands. He has composed music for films and television and has worked with musicians in many genres. Like Jaco Pastorius, Clarke gave the bass guitar a prominence it lacked.

Clarke was born in Philadelphia. His mother sang opera around the house, belonged to a church choir, and encouraged him to study music. He started on accordion, then tried violin. He was introduced to the bass as a schoolboy when he arrived late on the day instruments were distributed to students, and acoustic bass was one of the few remaining selections. He took lessons on double bass at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, beginning with five years of classical music. He picked up bass guitar in his teens so that he could perform at parties and imitate the rock and pop bands that girls liked. He cites as influences Ron Carter and Charles Mingus.

Andrew Hill (June 30, 1931 – April 20, 2007) was an American jazz pianist and composer.

Jazz critic John Fordham described Hill as a “uniquely gifted composer, pianist and educator” although “his status remained largely inside knowledge in the jazz world for most of his career.”His most-lauded work was recorded for Blue Note Records, spanning nearly a decade and a dozen albums that featured his cerebral interpretation of post-bop, often described as avant garde but uniquely Hill’s own style that shared little in common with free jazz of the 1960s.

Andrew Hill was born in Chicago, Illinois (not in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, nor was he born in 1937, as was reported by many earlier jazz reference books), to William and Hattie Hille. He had a brother, Robert, who was a singer and classical violin player. Hill took up the piano at the age of thirteen, and was encouraged by Earl Hines. As a child, he attended the University of Chicago Experimental School. He was referred by jazz composer Bill Russoto Paul Hindemith, with whom he studied informally until 1952.