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Ellis Larkins (May 15, 1923 – September 30, 2002) was an American jazz pianist born in Baltimore, Maryland, perhaps best known for his two recordings with Ella Fitzgerald: the albums Ella Sings Gershwin (1950) and Songs in a Mellow Mood (1954).^[1] He was also the leader in the first solo sides by singer Chris Connor on her album Chris (1954).

Larkins was the first African American to attend the Peabody Conservatory of Music, a well-known institute in Baltimore. He began his professional playing career in New York City after moving there to attend the Juilliard School. Following school Larkins performed jazz piano with Billy Moore and Edmond Hall. He recorded with Coleman Hawkins, Mildred Bailey, and Dicky Wells in the 1940s. In the 1950s he recorded with Ella Fitzgerald, Ruby Braff, and Beverly Kenney. His 1960s work included recordings or performances with Eartha Kitt, Joe Williams, Helen Humes, Georgia Gibbs and Harry Belafonte.

L. C. “Good Rockin'” Robinson (born Louis Charles Robinson; May 15, 1915 – September 26, 1976) was an American blues singer, guitarist, and fiddle player. He played an electric steel guitar.

Robinson was born in Brenham, Texas, United States. He learned to play guitar at nine years-old; supposedly Robinson was mentored by gospel blues singer-guitarist Blind Willie Johnson in the bottleneck style. Later in his career, he was introduced to the steel guitar by Western swingmusician Leon McAuliffe, and became a noted fiddle player, who instructed Sugarcane Harris. His brother, harmonica player A. C. Robinson, collaborated with L.C. Robinson in Texas in the 1930s, and later the two performed and recorded together in a band in California in the 1940s.

Gothart, a historical music ensemble, was founded in 1993. Five friends got together united by a common interest to restore medieval music. Their repertoire at that time focused mainly on the Czech Gothic production. Opuses originating in other European countries have enriched the repertoire since 1994. The band extended its set of instruments and covered also works by German minnesingers, French troubadours and the music of medieval Spain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8uAnn4OnRs

This spectacular panoramic view combines a new image of the field around the Wolf–Rayet star WR 22 in the Carina Nebula (right) with an earlier picture of the region around the unique star Eta Carinae in the heart of the nebula (left). The picture was created from images taken with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Distance 8,200 ly

WR 22, also known as V429 Carinae or HR 4188, is an eclipsing binary star system in the constellation Carina. The system contains a Wolf-Rayet(WR) star that is one of the most massive and most luminous stars known, and is also a bright x-ray source due to colliding winds with a less massive O class companion.

The WR 22 system contains two massive stars which orbit every 80 days. The spectrum and luminosity are dominated by the primary, which has a spectral type of WN7h, indicating that it is a WR star on the nitrogen sequence, but also with hydrogen lines in its spectrum. The secondary is an O9 star which appears to have the spectral luminosity class of a giant star, but the brightness of a main sequence star.

There is a shallow eclipse detectable when the primary passes in front of the secondary, which would be classed as the secondary eclipse. However, no primary eclipse is detected, which is believed to be due to the eccentricity of the system placing the stars further apart when the primary eclipse would occur. The separation of the stars varies from over 500 R_☉ to less than 150 R_☉. This strongly constrains the possible inclinations of the system.

John Symon Asher “Jack” Bruce (14 May 1943 – 25 October 2014) was a Scottish musician, singer and songwriter known primarily for his contributions to the British supergroup Cream, which also included the guitarist-singer Eric Clapton and the drummer Ginger Baker. In March 2011 Rolling Stone readers selected him as the eighth greatest bass guitarist of all time. “Most musicians would have a very hard time distinguishing themselves if they wound up in a band with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker,” the magazine said at the time, “but Jack Bruce was so gifted on the bass that he did it with ease.”

Bruce maintained a solo career that spanned several decades and also played in several musical groups. Although recognized first and foremost as a vocalist, bassist and songwriter, he also played double bass, harmonica, piano, cello and guitar. He was trained as a classical cellist and considered himself a jazz musician, although much of his catalogue of compositions and recordings tended toward rock and blues.

Stu Williamson (May 14, 1933 – October 1, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter and valve trombonist.

Born in Brattleboro, Vermont, Williamson was the younger brother of jazz pianist Claude Williamson. Williamson relocated to Los Angeles in 1949 and became a regular on the West Coast scene, playing with Stan Kenton (1951, 1954-1955), Woody Herman (1952-1953), Billy May, and Charlie Barnet. Between 1954 and 1958 he played intermittently with Shelly Manne, and was a ubiquitous session musician until 1968, when he retired from music.

Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. He was one of the first important soloists in jazz, beating trumpeter Louis Armstrong to the recording studio by several months. His erratic temperament hampered his career, and not until the late 1940s did he earn wide acclaim.

Bechet was born in New Orleans in 1897 to a middle-class Creole of color family. His older brother, Leonard Victor Bechet, was a full-time dentist and a part-time trombonist and bandleader. Sidney learned to play several musical instruments kept around the house, mostly by teaching himself; he decided to specialize in the clarinet. At the age of six, he started playing with his brother’s band at a family birthday party, debuting his talents to acclaim. Later in his youth, Bechet studied with Lorenzo Tio, “Big Eye” Louis Nelson Delisle, and George Baquet.

Portuguese guitar maestro Henrique Borges has a new album titled “Incursão” (Incursion). The recording features Henrique Borges on Portuguese guitar; Vânia Moreira on cello, Pedro Santos on accordion, Luís Teixeira on bass; Graciano Caldeira on classical guitar; and Maria João Sousa and Beatriz Jane on vocals.

This spectacular image of the Orion Nebula star-formation region was obtained from multiple exposures using the HAWK-I infrared camera on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. This is the deepest view ever of this region and reveals more very faint planetary-mass objects than expected.

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.

The Orion Nebula is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky, and is among the most intensely studied celestial features. The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary disks, brown dwarfs, intense and turbulent motions of the gas, and the photo-ionizingeffects of massive nearby stars in the nebula.

Stevland Hardaway Morris (né Judkins; born May 13, 1950), known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist. A child prodigy, he is considered to be one of the most critically and commercially successful musical performers of the late 20th century. Wonder signed with Motown‘s Tamla label at the age of 11, and he continued performing and recording for Motown into the 2010s. He has been blind since shortly after birth.

Among Wonder’s works are singles such as “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours“, “Superstition“, “Sir Duke“, “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” and “I Just Called to Say I Love You“; and albums such as Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life. He has recorded more than 30 U.S. top ten hits and received 25 Grammy Awards, one of the most-awarded male solo artists, and has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the top 60 best-selling music artists.Wonder is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr.‘s birthday a holiday in the United States. In 2009, Wonder was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 2013, Billboard magazine

Stevie Wonder was born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1950, the third of six children of Calvin Judkins and Lula Mae Hardaway, a songwriter. He was born six weeks premature which, along with the oxygen-rich atmosphere in the hospital incubator, resulted in retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), a condition in which the growth of the eyes is aborted and causes the retinas to detach; so he became blind. When Wonder was four, his mother divorced his father and moved to Detroit with her children. She changed her name back to Lula Hardaway and later changed her son’s surname to Morris, partly because of relatives. Wonder has retained Morris as his legal surname. He began playing instruments at an early age, including piano, harmonica and drums. He formed a singing partnership with a friend; calling themselves Stevie and John, they played on street corners, and occasionally at parties and dances.

Wonder sang as a child in a choir at the Whitestone Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan.

Ronnie Foster (born May 12, 1950) is an American funk and soul-jazz organist, and record producer. His albums recorded for Blue Note Records in the 1970s have gained a cult following after the emergence of acid-jazz.

Born in Buffalo, New York, Foster has performed as a sideman with a wide range of musicians. He frequently worked with guitarist George Benson, including playing electric piano, mini-moog, and composing “Lady” on Benson’s 1976 album Breezin’. Foster has also played organ with Chet Atkins, Grant Green, Grover Washington, Jr., Stanley Turrentine, Roberta Flack, Earl Klugh, Harvey Mason, Jimmy Smith, and Stevie Wonder. His producing credits include albums by Brazilian artists Djavan, Guilherme Arantes and Pepeu Gomes. Foster was the musical director for “Smokey Robinson Presents: Human Nature” which appeared at The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas from 2009–2015.

William McKinley “Red” Garland, Jr. (May 13, 1923 – April 23, 1984) was an American modern jazz pianist. Known for his work as a bandleader and during the 1950s with Miles Davis, Garland helped popularize the block chord style of piano playing.

William “Red” Garland was born in 1923 in Dallas, Texas. He began his musical studies on the clarinet and alto saxophone but, in 1941, switched to the piano. Less than five years later, Garland joined a well-known trumpet player in the southwest – Hot Lips Page, playing with him until a tour ended in New York in March 1946. Having decided to stay in New York to find work, Art Blakey came across Garland playing at a small club, only to return the next night with Blakey’s boss, Billy Eckstine.

Czech band Čankišou was formed in 1999. Several musicians, who until that time played in various bands, decided to play world music. The band dug up an old legend about Canki people, learned its language and collected musical instruments from all around the world: didjeridu, jembe, yabbara, flutes, saxophones, percussion, mandolin, bass guitar, drums etc. The band is influenced by many global sounds, Arabic, African, Balkan. All these influences combined with the rock history of each band member created a new genre called ethnobigbeat brass band.

On Mothers Day!

This image, the first to be released publicly from VISTA, the world’s largest survey telescope, shows the spectacular star-forming region known as the Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024, in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter) and its surroundings. In views of this evocative object in visible light the core of the nebula is completely hidden behind obscuring dust, but in this VISTA view, taken in infrared light, the cluster of very young stars at the object’s heart is revealed. The wide-field VISTA view also includes the glow of the reflection nebula NGC 2023, just below centre, and the ghostly outline of the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) towards the lower right. The bright bluish star towards the right is one of the three bright stars forming the Belt of Orion. The image was created from VISTA images taken through J, H and Ks filters in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. The image shows about half the area of the full VISTA field and is about 40 x 50 arcminutes in extent. The total exposure time was 14 minutes.

Stephen Lawrence Winwood (born 12 May 1948) is an English musician whose genres include rock, blue-eyed soul, rhythm and blues, blues rock, pop rock, and jazz. Though primarily a vocalist and keyboardist, Winwood also plays bass guitar, drums, acoustic and electric guitar, mandolin, violin, and other strings.

Winwood was a key member of The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith and Go. He also had a successful solo career with hits including “While You See a Chance“, “Valerie“, “Back in the High Life Again” and two US Billboard Hot 100 number ones: “Higher Love” and “Roll with It“. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Traffic in 2004.

In 2005, Winwood was honoured as a BMI Icon at the annual BMI London Awards for his “enduring influence on generations of music makers”. In 2008, Rolling Stone ranked Winwood No. 33 in its 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Winwood has won two Grammy Awards. He was nominated twice for a Brit Award for Best British Male Artist: 1988 and 1989. In 2011 he received the Ivor Novello Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors for Outstanding Song Collection.

Gary Peacock (born May 12, 1935, in Burley, Idaho, United States) is an American jazz double-bassist.

After military service in Germany, in the early sixties, he worked on the west coast with Barney Kessel, Bud Shank, Paul Bley and Art Pepper, then moved to New York. He worked there with Bley, the Bill Evans Trio (with Paul Motian), and Albert Ayler‘s trio with Sunny Murray. There were also some live dates with Miles Davis, as a temporary substitute for Ron Carter.

PLAYING FOR CHANGE

We are proud to release a new video from our Live Outside series recently recorded and filmed in the ancient West African Village of Kirina, Mali. This performance features Mahamadou Diabate and Sayba Diabate on the traditional instruments, calabash and kora, as well as PFC Band member, Roberto Luti, on steel guitar. This village is the home of one of our PFC Foundation music programs—Ecole de Musique de Kirina, and also holds the roots to traditional Mali music and the Blues.