mick laBriola

This richly coloured cloud of gas called RCW 34 is a site of star formation in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails). This image was taken using the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in northern Chile.

RCW 34, also known as Gum 19, is a star-forming region located in the southern constellation Vela, approximately 8,150 light-years away.

The object is very young, about 2 million years old, and contains a group of massive young stars.

These stars have a dramatic effect on the nebula. Gas exposed to strong UV radiation becomes ionized, meaning that the electrons have escaped the hydrogen atoms.

Stars are born from collapsing gas clouds and therefore abundant in regions with copious amounts of gas, like RCW 34.

This makes the cloud particularly interesting to scientists studying stellar birth and evolution.

Vast amounts of dust within RCW 34 block the view of the inner workings of the stellar nursery.

The nebula is characterized by extremely high extinction, meaning that almost all of the visible light from this region is absorbed before it reaches Earth.

Despite hiding away from direct view, astronomers can use infrared telescopes, to peer through the dust and study the nest of embedded stars.

Thomas Wright “Tom” Scott (born May 19, 1948) is an American saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He was a member of The Blues Brothersand leads the jazz fusion group L.A. Express.

Scott was born in Los Angeles, California. He is the son of prolific film and television composer Nathan Scott, who had more than 850 television credits and more than 100 film credits as a composer, orchestrator and conductor, including the theme songs for Dragnet and Lassie.

Tom Scott’s best-known works are the theme songs for TV series and movies from the 1970s and 1980s — Starsky and Hutch (a track entitled “Gotcha!”) and The Streets of San Francisco, and his soprano sax solo and fills on the 1975 No. 1 hit single “Listen to What the Man Said” for Wings. In 1976 he played the theme I Still Can’t Sleep in Taxi Driver. In 1982, Scott collaborated with Johnny Mathis to write and record two versions – lyrical and instrumental – of “Without Us”, the theme to the 80’s sitcom Family Ties. His version of “Today” (a Jefferson Airplane original) was sampled in the Pete Rock & CL Smooth 1992 hit “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)“. In the Philippines, his best known hit is “Keep This Love Alive”, which is a cut from his 1991 album of the same title, and featured lead vocals by David Pack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C05bLxgkKaQ

Cecil McBee (born May 19, 1935) is an American jazz bassist, one of the most influential in the history of jazz. McBee has recorded as a leader only a handful of times since the 1970s, but has contributed as a sideman to a number of jazz albums.

McBee was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 19, 1935. He studied clarinet at school, but switched to bass at the age of 17, and began playing in local nightclubs. After gaining a music degree from Ohio Central State University, he spent two years in the army, during which time he conducted the band at Fort Knox. In 1959 he played with Dinah Washington, and in 1962 he moved to Detroit, where he worked with Paul Winter‘s folk-rock ensemble in 1963–64.

Sonny Fortune (born May 19, 1939) is an American jazz saxphonist. Fortune plays soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, clarinet, and flute.

 After moving to New York City in 1967, Fortune recorded and appeared live with drummer Elvin Jones‘s group. In 1968 he was a member of Mongo Santamaría‘s band. He performed with singer Leon Thomas, and with pianist McCoy Tyner (1971–73). In 1974 Fortune replaced Dave Liebman in Miles Davis‘s ensemble, remaining until spring 1975, when he was succeeded by Sam Morrison. Fortune can be heard on the albums Big Fun, Get Up With It, Agharta and Pangaea, the last two recorded live in Japan.

Fortune joined Nat Adderley after his brief tenure with Davis, then formed his own group in June 1975, recording two albums for the Horizon Records. During the 1990s, he recorded several albums for Blue Note. He has also performed with Roy Brooks, Buddy Rich, George Benson, Rabih Abou Khalil, Roy Ayers, Oliver Nelson, Gary Bartz, Rashied Ali, and Pharoah Sanders, as well as appearing on the live album The Atlantic Family Live at Montreux (1977).

Born in Kinshasa (Congo) of Angolan parents, Sam Mangwana’s story is a rich tapestry of international influences.

Sam Mangwana is one of the prime singers and innovators of Congolese rumba, a musical form which has animated dancers and listeners alike throughout the African continent. Commonly known as soukous, Congolese rumba combines hip-swinging rhythms with lyrical guitars and vocals to create a music whose influence continues to reverberate in the West.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1qoHke6K0E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGjC9XMt2sM

The Danish 1.54-metre telescope located at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has captured a striking image of NGC 6559, an object that showcases the anarchy that reigns when stars form inside an interstellar cloud. This region of sky includes glowing red clouds of mostly hydrogen gas, blue regions where starlight is being reflected from tiny particles of dust and also dark regions where the dust is thick and opaque.

NGC 6559 is a star-forming region located at a distance of about 5000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Sagittarius, showing both emission (red) and reflection (bluish) regions.

Kai Chresten Winding (/ˈkaɪ ˈwɪndɪŋ/;^[a] May 18, 1922 – May 6, 1983) was a Danish-born American trombonist and jazz composer. He is known for his collaborations with trombonist J. J. Johnson.

Winding was born May 18, 1922 in Aarhus, Denmark. His father, Ove Winding was a naturalized U.S. citizen, thus Kai, his mother and sisters, though born abroad were already U.S. citizens. In September 1934, his mother, Jenny Winding, moved Kai and his two sisters, Ann and Alice. He graduated in 1940 from Stuyvesant High School in New York City and that same year began his career as a professional trombonist with Shorty Allen’s band. Subsequently, he played with Sonny Dunham and Alvino Rey until he entered the United States Coast Guard during World War II.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVMLvdAO39c

Lou Bennett (May 18, 1926, Philadelphia – February 10, 1997, Paris) was an American jazz organist.

Bennett first played bebop on piano, but started playing organ in 1956 after hearing Jimmy Smith. Bennett toured the U.S. with an organ trio between 1957 and 1959, and then moved to Paris in 1960. There he recorded and performed at the Blue Note with Jimmy Gourley and Kenny Clarke (as well as Rene Thomas); he returned to America only once, for the 1964 Newport Jazz Festival. He also recorded in the 1960s with Philip Catherine, Shirley Bunnie Foy and Franco Manzecchi. In the 1980s he played in his own quintet with Gerard Badini, among others. During this period he also toured extensively throughout Spain, including, Almeria, Barcelona, La Coruna, Segovia, and Madrid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fucD0TxBaqk

World Music on Flamenco Fridays with Cameron de la Isla

Seen edge-on, observations of NGC 4945 suggest that this hive of stars is a spiral galaxy much like our own Milky Way, with swirling, luminous arms and a bar-shaped centre. Sites of active star formation, known as HII regions, are seen prominently in the image, appearing bright pink. These resemblances aside, NGC 4945 has a brighter centre that likely harbours a supermassive black hole, which is devouring reams of matter and blasting energy out into space. NGC 4945 is about 13 million light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus (the Centaur) and is beautifully revealed in this image taken with data in five bands (B, V, R, H-alpha and S II) with the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla. The field of view is 30 x 30 arcminutes. North is up, East is to the left.

Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (born May 17, 1942), who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician, a self-taught singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, piano, banjo, and harmonica, among many other instruments. He often incorporates elements of world music into his works and has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his almost 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, and the South Pacific.

Born Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, Jr. on May 17, 1942, in Harlem, New York, Mahal grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was raised in a musical environment; his mother was a member of a local gospel choir and his father was an Afro-Caribbean jazz arranger and piano player. His family owned a shortwave radio which received music broadcasts from around the world, exposing him at an early age to world music. Early in childhood he recognized the stark differences between the popular music of his day and the music that was played in his home. He also became interested in jazz, enjoying the works of musicians such as Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Milt Jackson. His parents came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, instilling in their son a sense of pride in his Caribbean and African ancestry through their stories.

John Lenwood “Jackie” McLean (May 17, 1931 – March 31, 2006)^[1] was an American jazz alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader, and educator, and is one of the few musicians to be elected to the Down Beat Hall of Fame in the year of their death.

 McLean was born in New York City. His father, John Sr., played guitar in Tiny Bradshaw‘s orchestra. After his father’s death in 1939, Jackie’s musical education was continued by his godfather, his record-store-owning stepfather, and several noted teachers. He also received informal tutoring from neighbors Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and Charlie Parker. During high school he played in a band with Kenny Drew, Sonny Rollins, and Andy Kirk Jr. (the tenor saxophonist son of Andy Kirk).

Walter Dewey Redman (May 17, 1931 – September 2, 2006) was an American jazz saxophonist, known for performing free jazz as a bandleader, and with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett.

Redman played mainly tenor saxophone, though he occasionally doubled on alto saxophone, played the Chinese suona (which he called a musette) and on rare occasions played the clarinet.

His son is saxophonist Joshua Redman.

Redman was born in Fort Worth, Texas. He attended I.M. Terrell High School, and played in the school band with Ornette Coleman, Prince Lasha and Charles Moffett. After high school, Redman briefly enrolled in the electrical engineering program at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, but became disillusioned with the program and returned home to Texas. In 1953, Redman earned a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Arts from Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical University.

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

Zimbabwe’s most celebrated young band with their powerful Afro Fusion and Zim Rock music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_h6bMjTZpw&index=1&list=PLEB3LPVcGcWZ0hsQ5_jgSMhawAnDzy1io

NGC 3603 is a starburst region : a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula’s extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22,000 light-years away from the Sun, it is the closest region of this kind known in our galaxy, providing astronomers with a local test bed for studying the intense star formation processes, very common in other galaxies, but hard to observe in detail because of their large distance.

The newly released image, obtained with the FORS instrument attached to one of the four 8.2-metre VLT Unit Telescopes at Cerro Paranal, Chile, is a three-colour combination of exposures acquired through visible and near-infrared (V, R, I) filters. This image portrays a wider field around the stellar cluster and reveals the rich texture of the surrounding clouds of gas and dust. The field of view is 7 arcminutes wide.

About 20,000 light-years away

Jeremy Webster “Fred” Frith (born 17 February 1949) is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improvisor.

Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. He was also a member of the groups Art Bears, Massacre, and Skeleton Crew. He has collaborated with a number of prominent musicians, including Robert Wyatt, Derek Bailey, the Residents, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, Brian Eno, Mike Patton, Lars Hollmer, Bill Laswell, Iva Bittová, Jad Fair, Kramer, the ARTE Quartett, and Bob Ostertag. He has also composed several long works, including Traffic Continues (1996, performed 1998 by Frith and Ensemble Modern) and Freedom in Fragments (1993, performed 1999 by Rova Saxophone Quartet). Frith produces most of his own music, and has also produced many albums by other musicians, including Curlew, the Muffins, Etron Fou Leloublan, and Orthotonics.

Frith is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel’s award-winning 1990 documentary Step Across the Border. He also appears in the Canadian documentary Act of God, which is about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning. Frith has contributed to a number of music publications, including New Musical Express and Trouser Press, and has conducted improvising workshops across the world. Frith’s career spans over four decades and he appears on over 400 albums. He still performs actively throughout the world.

Currently Frith is Professor of Composition in the Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California. He lives in the United States with his wife, German photographer Heike Liss, and their children, Finn Liss (born 1991) and Lucia Liss (born 1994).

William Emanuel Cobham Jr. (born May 16, 1944) is a Panamanian-American jazz drummer who came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s with trumpeter Miles Davis and then with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. According to AllMusic‘s reviewer, Cobham is “generally acclaimed as fusion’s greatest drummer”. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Classic Drummer Hall of Fame in 2013.

Born in Colón, Panama, Cobham moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York, when he was three. His father worked as a hospital statistician during the week and played piano on weekends. Cobham started on drums at age four and joined his father four years later. When he was fourteen, he got his first drum kit as a gift after being accepted to The High School of Music & Art in New York City.He was drafted in 1965, and for the next three years he played with a U.S. Army band