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The California Nebula (NGC 1499) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Perseus. It is so named because it appears to resemble the outline of the US State of California on long exposure photographs. It is almost 2.5° long on the sky and, because of its very low surface brightness, it is extremely difficult to observe visually. It can be observed with a Hβ filter (isolates the Hβ line at 486 nm) in a rich-field telescope under dark skies.[1]It lies at a distance of about 1,000 light years from Earth. Its fluorescence is due to excitation of the Hβ line in the nebula by the nearby prodigiously energetic O7 star, xi Persei (also known as Menkib, seen at center below it in the inset at right).[2]
The California Nebula was discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1884.
A coincidence is that the California Nebula transits in the zenith in central California as the latitude matches the declination of the object.
more...Paul Horn (March 17, 1930 – June 29, 2014) was an American jazz flautist and saxophonist, and an early pioneer of new-age music.
Moving to Los Angeles he played with Chico Hamilton‘s quintet from 1956 to 1958 and became an established West Coast session player. He played on the Duke Ellington Orchestra’s Suite Thursday and worked with Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and others. He scored the 1959 animated television series Clutch Cargo.
In 1960 Horn recorded for Fantasy Records with Latin Jazz vibraphonist Cal Tjader (with drummers Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaria) for the album Latino! (originally released in 1962 and later re-released with the same title in 1992.)
Horn’s Quintet produced jazz albums for Columbia and RCA Victor up until 1966. During this period, he was the subject of a David Wolper television documentary, Portrait of a Jazz Musician.
Horn became a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation. He attended training at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi‘s ashram along with The Beatles on their 1968 trip to India. Following his experiences in India Horn’s recordings moved from jazz to world and new-age music.
In 1970, he moved with his two sons Marlen and Robin from his first marriage to Lilian Yvonne Jourdan, and second wife Tryntje Baum to Victoria, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island. He formed his own quintet and recorded film scores for the National Film Board of Canada.
He was known for his innovations on both metal and traditional wooden flutes. Best known of his albums are his “Inside” recordings, which feature airy, echoing sounds created in places of spiritual importance. The series began with Horn sneaking a tape recorder into the Taj Mahal during a trip to India in 1968, (released as Inside)[citation needed] He was also with the Beatles at Rishikesh in the same year and continued later with recordings inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, and a return to the Taj Mahal in 1989. Horn later made similar recordings in a cathedral, in the canyons of the Southwestern United States with Native American flutist R. Carlos Nakai, and with orcas.
more...Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American jazz pianist and vocalist. He recorded over one hundred songs that became hits on the pop charts. His trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Cole also acted in films and on television and performed on Broadway. He was the first black man to host an American television series.
Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 17, 1919. He had three brothers: Eddie (1910–1970), Ike (1927–2001), and Freddy (b. 1931), and a half-sister, Joyce Coles. Each of the Cole brothers pursued careers in music. When Nat King Cole was four years old, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where his father, Edward Coles, became a Baptist minister.
When he was fifteen, Cole dropped out of high school to pursue a music career. After his brother Eddie, a bassist, came home from touring with Noble Sissle, they formed a sextet and recorded two singles for Decca in 1936 as Eddie Cole’s Swingsters. They performed in a revival of the musical Shuffle Along. Nat Cole went on tour with the musical. In 1937, he married Nadine Robinson, who was a member of the cast. After the show ended in Los Angeles, Cole and Nadine settled there while he looked for work. He led his own big band, then found work playing piano in nightclubs. When a club owner asked him to form a band, he hired bassist Wesley Prince and guitarist Oscar Moore. They called themselves the King Cole Swingsters after the nursery rhyme in which “Old King Cole was a merry old soul.” They changed their name to the King Cole Trio before making radio transcriptions and recording for small labels.
more...Lovie Lee (March 17, 1909 – May 23, 1997) was an American electric blues pianist and singer. He is best known for his work accompanying Muddy Waters. He also recorded a solo album, in 1992. He was the “adoptive stepfather” of the bluesman Carey Bell and thus the “grandfather” of Lurrie Bell.
He was born Edward Lee Watson in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and grew up in Meridian, Mississippi. He taught himself to play the piano and began performing in various churches and at rodeos and vaudeville shows. He had already acquired the nickname Lovie from a doting aunt. He found part-time employment playing with the Swinging Cats in the early 1950s. The group included Carey Bell, who Lee took under his “fatherly” protection, and together they moved to Chicago, in September 1956.[3][4] Lee worked during the day in a woodworking factory, and for many years played in the evening in numerous Chicago blues nightclubs, including Porter’s Lounge. He was well known around Chicago for his blues piano playing.[1] He later worked as an upholsterer, but he kept together his backing band, the Sensationals.
more...Performing for Shabbat Service at Mt Zion Temple
Margolis Hall
Friday March 16th 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha1z6K0Zt6c
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Seen as a seagull and a duck, these nebulae are not the only cosmic clouds to evoke images of flight. But both are winging their way across this broad celestial landscape, spanning almost 7 degrees acrossplanet Earth’s night sky toward the constellation Canis Major. The expansive Seagull (top center) is itself composed of two major cataloged emission nebulae. Brighter NGC 2327 forms the head with the more diffuse IC 2177 as the wings and body. Impressively, the Seagull’s wingspan would correspond to about 250 light-years at the nebula’s estimated distance of 3,800 light-years. At the lower right, the Duck appears much more compact and would span only about 50 light-years given its 15,000 light-year distance estimate. Blown by energetic winds from an extremely massive, hot star near its center, the Duck nebula is cataloged as NGC 2359. Of course, the Duck’s thick body and winged appendages also lend it the slightly more dramatic popular moniker, Thor’s Helmet.
more...Thomas Lee Flanagan (March 16, 1930 – November 16, 2001) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He grew up in Detroit, initially influenced by such pianists as Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, and Nat King Cole, and then by the newer bebop musicians. Within months of moving to New York in 1956, he had recorded with Miles Davis and on Sonny Rollins‘ landmark Saxophone Colossus. Recordings under various leaders, including the historically important Giant Steps of John Coltrane, and The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, continued well into 1962, when he became vocalist Ella Fitzgerald‘s full-time accompanist. He worked with Fitzgerald for three years until 1965, and then in 1968 returned to be her pianist and musical director, this time for a decade.
After leaving Fitzgerald in 1978, Flanagan then attracted praise for the elegance of his playing, which was principally in trio settings when under his own leadership. In his 45-year recording career, he recorded more than three dozen albums under his own name and more than 200 as a sideman. By the time of his death, he was one of the most widely admired jazz pianists and had influenced both his contemporaries and later generations of players.
Flanagan was born in Conant Gardens, Detroit, Michigan, on March 16, 1930.He was the youngest of six children – five boys and a girl. His parents were both originally from Georgia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHSWyy_9U7k&t=794s
more...Abraham John Bond Jr., known as Son Bonds (March 16, 1909 – August 31, 1947), was an American country blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He was a working associate of Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon. He was similar to Estes in his guitar-playing style. According to the music journalist Jim O’Neal, “the music to one of Bonds’s songs, ‘Back and Side Blues’ (1934), became a standard blues melody when Sonny Boy Williamson I, from nearby Jackson, Tennessee, used it in his classic “Good Morning, School Girl“. The best-known of Bonds’s other works are “A Hard Pill to Swallow” and “Come Back Home.”
Bonds was born in Brownsville, Tennessee. He was also billed on records as “Brownsville” Son Bonds and Brother Son Bonds.
Sleepy John Estes, in his earlier recordings, was backed by Yank Rachell (mandolin) or Hammie Nixon (harmonica), but by the late 1930s he was accompanied in the recording studio by either Bonds or Charlie Pickett (guitar).
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World Music on Flamenco Fridays with Angelita Montoya.
Performing Bulerias
Hija del bailaor Juan Montoya y de Antonia “La Negra”.
more...The Peaceful Rastaman
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Cygnus /ˈsɪɡnəs/ is a northern constellation lying on the plane of the Milky Way, deriving its name from the Latinized Greek word for swan. The swan is one of the most recognizable constellations of the northern summer and autumn, and it features a prominent asterism known as the Northern Cross(in contrast to the Southern Cross). Cygnus was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations.
Cygnus contains Deneb, one of the brightest stars in the night sky and one corner of the Summer Triangle, as well as some notable X-ray sources and the giant stellar association of Cygnus OB2. Cygnus is also known as the Northern Cross. Deneb is the tail star in the constellation and is the Arabic word for tail. One of the stars of this association, NML Cygni, is one of the largest stars currently known. The constellation is also home to Cygnus X-1, a distant X-ray binary containing a supergiant and unseen massive companion that was the first object widely held to be a black hole. Many star systems in Cygnus have known planets as a result of the Kepler Mission observing one patch of the sky, an area around Cygnus. In addition, most of the eastern part of Cygnus is dominated by the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall, a giant galaxy filament that is the largest known structure in the observable universe, covering most of the northern sky.
more...Sly Stone (born Sylvester Stewart, March 15, 1943, Denton, Texas) is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, most famous for his role as frontman for Sly and the Family Stone, a band which played a critical role in the development of soul, funk, rock, and psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1993, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the group.
As part of the doctrines of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), to which the Stewart family belonged, the parents – K.C and Alpha Stewart – encouraged musical expression in the household. Sylvester and his brother Freddie along with their sisters Rose and Vaetta formed “The Stewart Four” as children, performing gospel music in the Church of God in Christ and even recording a single local release 78 rpm single, “On the Battlefield” b/w “Walking in Jesus’ Name”, in 1952. The eldest sister, Loretta, was the only Stewart child not to pursue a musical career. All of the other Stewart children would later adopt the surname “Stone” and become members of Sly & the Family Stone.
more...Ryland Peter “Ry” Cooder (born March 15, 1947) is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, and record producer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.
Cooder’s solo work draws upon many genres. He has played with Captain Beefheart, Ali Farka Touré, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Randy Newman, David Lindley, The Chieftains, The Doobie Brothers, and Carla Olson & the Textones (on record and film). He formed the band Little Village. He also produced the Buena Vista Social Club album (1997), which became a worldwide hit. Wim Wenders directed the documentary film of the same name (1999), which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000.
Cooder was ranked eighth on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” (David Fricke’s Picks). A 2010 ranking by Gibson placed him at number 32.
Cooder was born in Los Angeles, California, to father Bill Cooder and Italian-American mother Emma Casaroli. He grew up in Santa Monica, California, and graduated from Santa Monica High School in 1964. During the 1960s, he briefly attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon.He began playing the guitar when he was three years old. He has had a glass eye since he was four, when he accidentally stuck a knife in his left eye
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REBIm8jMrSA
more...Charles Lloyd (born March 15, 1938 in Memphis, Tennessee) is an American jazz musician. Though he primarily plays tenor saxophone and flute, he has occasionally recorded on other reed instruments, including alto saxophone and the Hungarian tárogató.
Lloyd’s working band since 2007 features pianist Jason Moran, bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Eric Harland.
Charles Lloyd grew up in Memphis and was exposed to blues, gospel and jazz. He is of African, Cherokee, Mongolian, and Irish ancestry. He was given his first saxophone at the age of 9 and was riveted by 1940s radio broadcasts by Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Billie Holidayand Duke Ellington. His early teachers included pianist Phineas Newborn, Jr. and saxophonist Irvin Reason. His closest childhood friend was trumpeter Booker Little. As a teenager Lloyd played jazz with saxophone
more...Samuel John “Lightnin’” Hopkins (March 15, 1912 – January 30, 1982)[1] was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist, and occasional pianist, from Centerville, Texas. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 71 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.[2]
The musicologist Robert “Mack” McCormick opined that Hopkins is “the embodiment of the jazz-and-poetry spirit, representing its ancient form in the single creator whose words and music are one act”.
Hopkins was born in Centerville, Texas, and as a child was immersed in the sounds of the blues. He developed a deep appreciation for this music at the age of 8, when he met Blind Lemon Jefferson at a church picnic in Buffalo, Texas. That day, Hopkins felt the blues was “in him”.[citation needed] He went on to learn from his older (distant) cousin, the country blues singer Alger “Texas” Alexander. (Hopkins had another cousin, the Texas electric blues guitarist Frankie Lee Sims, with whom he later recorded.) Hopkins began accompanying Jefferson on guitar at informal church gatherings. Jefferson reputedly never let anyone play with him except young Hopkins, and Hopkins learned much from Jefferson at these gatherings.
In the mid-1930s, Hopkins was sent to Houston County Prison Farm; the offense for which he was imprisoned is unknown. In the late 1930s, he moved to Houston with Alexander in an unsuccessful attempt to break into the music scene there. By the early 1940s, he was back in Centerville, working as a farm hand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vag4irlB30
more...Named for the Robin Hood-like bandits of the 19th century, the band plays something described as speed punk freak fol with Hungarian folk Romani stylings.
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