Blog
This tantalizing array of nebulas and stars can be found about two degrees south of the famous star-forming Orion Nebula. The region abounds with energetic young stars producing jets and outflows that push through the surrounding material at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second. The interaction creates luminous shock waves known as Herbig-Haro (HH) objects. For example, the graceful, flowing arc just right of center is cataloged as HH 222, also called the Waterfall Nebula. Seen below the Waterfall, HH 401 has a distinctive cone shape. The bright bluish nebula below and left of center is NGC 1999, a dusty cloud reflecting light from an embedded variable star. The entire cosmic vista spans over 30 light-years, near the edge of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex some 1,500 light-years distant.
more...Born March 7, 1970 in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, percussionist Paoli Mejias’ rise to Latin jazz fame is a story of sweat and dedication. Completely self taught, Paoli purchased his first set of congas at age twelve, inspired by records of conga great Carlos “Patato” Valdés and Latin jazz innovators Batacumbele and Irakere. Learning by imitating the sounds he heard on the records, Paoli taught himself the language of the congas without the benefit of an instructor. By his mid-to-late teens, he could be found at jam sessions in the streets and on the beaches of San Juan. He earned invitations from bandleaders like Rafú Warner, José Nogueras, Glen Monroig and Charlie Sepúlveda. As he worked his way up the live music food chain in Puerto Rico, Paoli found himself performing alongside the Latin jazz legends who had inspired him in his early years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQM4M_TaYaE
more...Born: March 7, 1967
Dan Papirany is an adventurous Jazz pianist, composer who understands and follows the eloquent philosophy that is to play melodic phrases and rich harmonies.
Originally starting out as a drummer at seventeen years of age, he discovered the music of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett’s piano playing which led him to switch instruments to the piano. He remembers a quote from drummer Peter Erskine, “play what you mean and mean what you play” for this quote opened up a whole new horizon as he began to play and record professionally as a serious musician.
While studying jazz piano with Leigh Jackson in Wellington, Dan formed his first trio and played in local venues and mainly at “Bar Bodega”.
Music with Nigerian drummer Baba Olatunji
more...RHYTHM ROOTS WORKSHOP
Tuesday March 6th noon-2pm
Partnership Resources Inc St Louis Park
Mounting a performance for Chicka Boom Chicka Boom
with Erica, Annie and Marrie nothing will deter the rhythm making for these drummers.
In this beautiful celestial still life composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170 shines at the upper left. Reflecting the light of nearby hot stars, NGC 2170 is joined by other bluish reflection nebulae, a compact red emission region, and streamers of obscuring dust against a backdrop of stars. Like the common household items still life painters often choose for their subjects, the clouds of gas, dust, and hot stars pictured here are also commonly found in this setting – a massive, star-forming molecular cloud in the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). The giant molecular cloud, Mon R2, is impressively close, estimated to be only 2,400 light-years or so away. At that distance, this canvas would be about 15 light-years across.
more...Flora Purim (born March 6, 1942) is a Brazilian jazz singer known primarily for her work in the jazz fusion style. She became prominent for her part in Return to Forever with Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke. She has recorded and performed with numerous artists, including Dizzy Gillespie, Gil Evans, Opa, Stan Getz, Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, Santana, Jaco Pastorius, and her husband Airto Moreira.
In 2002, Purim was the recipient of one of Brazil’s highest awards, the 2002 Ordem do Rio Branco for Lifetime Achievement. She has been called “The Queen of Brazilian Jazz”.
Purim was born in Rio de Janeiro to Jewish parents who were both classical musicians: her father Naum Purim played violin and her mother Rachel Vaisberg was a pianist. Flora discovered American jazz when her mother played it while her husband was out of the house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oizgj1Q8JW4
more...John Leslie “Wes” Montgomery (March 6, 1923 – June 15, 1968) was an American jazz guitarist. He is widely considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian and influencing countless others. Montgomery was known for an unusual technique of plucking the strings with the side of his thumb which granted him a distinctive sound.
He often worked with his brothers Buddy (piano and vibes) and Monk (bass guitar), and with organist Jimmy Smith. Montgomery’s recordings up to 1965 were generally oriented towards hard bop, soul jazz, and post bop, while circa 1965 he began recording more pop-oriented instrumental albums that featured less improvisation but found mainstream success. His later-career guitar style is a major influence on fusion and smooth jazz.
Montgomery was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. According to NPR Jazz Profiles “The Life and Music Of Wes Montgomery”, the nickname “Wes” was a child’s abbreviation of his middle name, Leslie.[2] He came from a musical family; his brothers, Monk (double bass and electric bass) and Buddy(vibraphone and piano), were jazz performers. The brothers released a number of albums together as the Montgomery Brothers. Although he was not skilled at reading music, he could learn complex melodies and riffs by ear. Montgomery started learning the six-string guitar at the relatively late age of 20 by listening to and learning the recordings of his idol, guitarist Charlie Christian; however, he had played a four string tenor guitar since age twelve. He was known for his ability to play Christian’s solos note for note and was hired by Lionel Hampton for this ability.
more...Walter E. “Furry” Lewis (March 6, 1893 or 1899 – September 14, 1981) was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. He was one of the first of the blues musicians active in the 1920s to be brought out of retirement and given new opportunities to record during the folk blues revival of the 1960s.
Lewis was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. His birth year is uncertain. Many sources give 1893, the date he gave in his later years, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest 1899, based on his 1900 census entry, and other sources suggest 1895 or 1898. His family moved to Memphis when he was seven. He acquired the nickname “Furry” from childhood playmates.By 1908, he was playing solo at parties, in taverns, and on the street. He was also invited to play several dates with W. C. Handy‘s Orchestra.
In his travels as a musician, he was exposed to a wide variety of performers, including Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Alger “Texas” Alexander. Like his contemporary Frank Stokes, he grew tired of traveling and took a permanent job in 1922. His position as a street sweeper for the city of Memphis, a job he held until his retirement in 1966, allowed him to continue performing music in Memphis.
more...World Music from the Yoruba traditions brought to the diaspora via
Candomble y Santeria featuring POPURRI DE CANTOS A OSHUN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCu51MncMhc&index=43&list=PLEB3LPVcGcWbHKyo-uy8CkVvebHEsluVK
more...The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field in Light and Sound
Galaxies, galaxies everywhere – as far as the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope can see. This view of nearly 10,000 galaxies is the deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, this galaxy-studded view represents a “deep” core sample of the universe, cutting across billions of light-years.
The snapshot includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colours. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100, may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. The nearest galaxies – the larger, brighter, well-defined spirals and ellipticals – thrived about 1 billion years ago, when the cosmos was 13 billion years old.
In vibrant contrast to the rich harvest of classic spiral and elliptical galaxies, there is a zoo of oddball galaxies littering the field. Some look like toothpicks; others like links on a bracelet. A few appear to be interacting. These oddball galaxies chronicle a period when the universe was younger and more chaotic. Order and structure were just beginning to emerge.
The Ultra Deep Field observations, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, represent a narrow, deep view of the cosmos. Peering into the Ultra Deep Field is like looking through a 2.5 metre-long soda straw.
In ground-based photographs, the patch of sky in which the galaxies reside (just one-tenth the diameter of the full Moon) is largely empty. Located in the constellation Fornax, the region is so empty that only a handful of stars within the Milky Way galaxy can be seen in the image.
In this image, blue and green correspond to colours that can be seen by the human eye, such as hot, young, blue stars and the glow of Sun-like stars in the disks of galaxies. Red represents near-infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, such as the red glow of dust-enshrouded galaxies.
The image required 800 exposures taken over the course of 400 Hubble orbits around Earth. The total amount of exposure time was 11.3 days, taken between Sept. 24, 2003 and Jan. 16, 2004.
more...Louis A. “Lou” Levy (March 5, 1928 – January 23, 2001) was an American jazz pianist.
A professional at age nineteen, Levy played with Georgie Auld (1947 and later), Sarah Vaughan, Chubby Jackson (1947–1948), Boyd Raeburn, Woody Herman’s Second Herd (1948–1950), Tommy Dorsey (1950) and Flip Phillips. Levy left music for a few years in the early fifties and then returned to gain a strong reputation as an accompanist to singers, working with Peggy Lee (1955–1973), Ella Fitzgerald (1957–1962), June Christy, Anita O’Day and Pinky Winters. Levy also played with Dizzy Gillespie, Shorty Rogers, Stan Getz, Terry Gibbs, Benny Goodman, Supersax and most of the major West Coast players. Levy recorded as a leader for Nocturne (1954), RCA, Jubilee, Philips, Interplay (1977), and Verve.
more...Wilbur Little (1928 in Parmele, North Carolina – 1987 in Amsterdam) was an African-American jazz bassist known for Hard bop and Post-bop.
Little originally played piano, but switched to bass after serving in the military. In 1949 he moved to Washington, DC, where he worked with “Sir” Charles Thompson among others. After that he was in J. J. Johnson‘s quintet from 1955 to 1958 and was also the bassist for the Tommy FlanaganTrio. He moved to the Netherlands in 1977 and lived there for the rest of his life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOsD-z9wuhY
more...World Music with Spanish Medieval composer Francisco de la Torre (1483 – 1504)
more...he sweeping arms of NGC 3359 are full of color with the punctuated pinks of star forming regions against the bluish arms which are filled with energetic young stars. Although the galaxy is 30-40 million light years away, the brightness, form and “drama” of the galaxy makes it stand out among galaxies at similar distances. Viewers with a good monitor and good eyes will note two very faint arms that wrap around this splendid galaxy.
more...Ricky Ford (born March 4, 1954) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist.
Ford was born in Boston and studied at the New England Conservatory. In 1974 he recorded with Gunther Schuller and then played in the Duke Ellington Orchestra under Mercer Ellington from 1974 to 1976. After this he played with Charles Mingus (1976–77), Dannie Richmond (1978–81), Lionel Hampton (1980–82), and then in the Mingus Dynasty (1982). He also played with Abdullah Ibrahim (1983–90) and Mal Waldron (1989–94), and has recorded with many other notable musicians including Yusef Lateef, Sonny Stitt, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Amina Claudine Myers, Sathima Bea Benjamin, Steve Lacy, and others.
Ford has recorded extensively as a leader for Muse and Candid.
He settled in Paris, France, in the 1990s. He taught at Istanbul Bilgi University from 2001 to 2006.
In 2009 he founded the Toucy Jazz Festival in Yonne, (France), and invited musicians including Rhoda Scott (2009) and Ravi Coltrane (2011).
more...Jan Garbarek (born 4 March 1947) is a Norwegian jazz saxophonist who is also active in classical music and world music.
Garbarek was born in Mysen, Norway, the only child of a former Polish prisoner of war, Czesław Garbarek, and a Norwegian farmer’s daughter. He grew up in Oslo, stateless until the age of seven, as there was no automatic grant of citizenship in Norway at the time. When he was 21, he married Vigdis. He is the father of musician and composer Anja Garbarek.
Garbarek’s sound is one of the hallmarks of the ECM Records label, which has released virtually all of his recordings. His style incorporates a sharp-edged tone, long, keening, sustained notes, and generous use of silence. He began his recording career in the late 1960s, notably featuring on recordings by the American jazz composer George Russell (such as Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature). If he had initially appeared as a devotee of Albert Ayler and Peter Brötzmann, by 1973 he had turned his back on the harsh dissonances of avant-garde jazz, retaining only his tone from his previous approach. Garbarek gained wider recognition through his work with pianist Keith Jarrett‘s European Quartet which released the albums Belonging (1974), My Song (1977) and the live recordings Personal Mountains (1979), and Nude Ants (1979). He was also a featured soloist on Jarrett’s orchestral works Luminessence (1974) and Arbour Zena (1975).
As a composer, Garbarek tends to draw heavily from Scandinavian folk melodies, a legacy of his Ayler influence. He is also a pioneer of ambient jazz composition, most notably on his 1976 album Dis a collaboration with guitarist Ralph Towner that featured the distinctive sound of a wind harp on several tracks. This textural approach, which rejects traditional notions of thematic improvisation (best exemplified by Sonny Rollins) in favour of a style described by critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton as “sculptural in its impact”, has been critically divisive. Garbarek’s more meandering recordings are often labeled as new-age music, a style generally scorned by more orthodox jazz musicians and listeners, or spiritual ancestors thereof. Other experiments have included setting a collection of poems of Olav H. Hauge to music, with a single saxophone complementing a full mixed choir; this has led to notable performances with Grex Vocalis, but not yet to recordings. In the 1980s, Garbarek’s music began to incorporate synthesizers and elements of world music. He has collaborated with Indian and Pakistani musicians such as Trilok Gurtu, Zakir Hussain, Hariprasad Chaurasia, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Garbarek is credited for composing original music for the 2000 film Kippur.
more...More Posts
- Jim Morrison
- Toots Hibbert
- Jean Sibelius
- Jimmy Smith
- Cleo Brown
- World Music Ustad Shujaat Hussain Khan
- Daily Roots Blue Riddim Band
- Cosmos NGC 7293
- Harry Chapin
- Tom Waits
- Mads Vinding
- Louis Prima
- World Music Cheb Khaled, Faudel & Rachid Taha
- Daily Roots Rod Taylor
- Cosmos M16
- Miroslav Vitouš
- Eddie Gladden
- Francis Frankie Dunlop
- Dave Brubeck
- World Music Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band