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Henry Threadgill (born February 15, 1944) is an American composer, saxophonist, and flautist, who came to prominence in the 1970s leading jazz ensembles with unusual instrumentation and often incorporating genres other than jazz. He has performed and recorded with several ensembles: Air, Aggregation Orb, Make a Move, the seven-piece Henry Threadgill Sextett, the twenty-piece Society Situation Dance Band, Very Very Circus, X-75, and Zooid.
He was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his album In for a Penny, In for a Pound,[2] which premiered at Roulette Intermedium on December 4, 201
Threadgill performed as a percussionist in his high-school marching band before taking up baritone saxophone, alto saxophone, and flute. He studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, majoring in piano, flute, and composition. He studied piano with Gail Quillman and composition with Stella Roberts. He was an original member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in his hometown of Chicago and worked under the guidance of Muhal Richard Abrams before leaving to tour with a gospel band.
more...Harold Arlen (born Hyman Arluck; February 15, 1905 – April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music who composed over five-hundred songs, a number of which have become known worldwide. In addition to composing the songs for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz (lyrics by E.Y. Harburg), including the classic “Over the Rainbow“, Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. “Over the Rainbow” was voted the twentieth century’s No. 1 song by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Arlen was born in Buffalo, New York, United States, the child of a cantor. His twin brother died the next day. He learned to play the piano as a youth, and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer before moving to New York City in his early twenties, where he worked as an accompanist in vaudeville and changed his name to Harold Arlen. Between 1926 and about 1934, Arlen appeared occasionally as a band vocalist on records by The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, Joe Venuti, Leo Reisman, and Eddie Duchin, usually singing his own compositions.
more...World Music with Chinese Pipa player Wu Man
more...What’s that inside the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula dubbed IC 1805 looks, in whole, like a human heart. It’s shape perhaps fitting of the Valentine’s Day, this heart glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element: hydrogen. The red glow and the larger shape are all created by a small group of stars near the nebula’s center. In the heart of the Heart Nebula are young stars from the open star cluster Melotte 15 that are eroding away several picturesque dust pillars with their energetic light and winds. The open cluster of stars contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, many dim stars only a fraction of the mass of our Sun, and an absent microquasar that was expelled millions of years ago. The Heart Nebula is located about 7,500 light years away toward the constellation of the mythological Queen of Aethiopia (Cassiopeia).
more...Thomas W. “Tommy” Campbell (born February 14, 1957, Norristown, Pennsylvania) is an American jazz drummer.
Campbell’s uncle is Jimmy Smith; Campbell played with him as a teenager and subsequently. He was a student at Berklee College of Music from 1975 to 1979, where he played with Tiger Okoshiand Marlena Shaw, and led a band which included Kevin Eubanks. After graduating he became a member of Dizzy Gillespie‘s big band, where he worked until 1982; he then joined John McLaughlin‘s group until 1984. He recorded with Eubanks throughout the 1980s and played with Sonny Rollins, Tania Maria, Gary Burton, Igor Butman, and Makoto Ozone in the decade. After relocating to New York City in 1988, he worked with his own group alongside Charnett Moffett, Aydin Esen, and Eubanks. He also worked in a trio setting with David Kikoski and Alex Blake. As a sideman, he worked in the 1990s with Stanley Jordan, the Manhattan Transfer, the Great Saxophone Quartet, David Murray, Ray Anderson, and Mingus Big Band. In early 1998 he moved to Japan and has split his time between the two countries since then.
more...Samuel Gene Maghett (February 14, 1937 – December 1, 1969), known as Magic Sam, was an American Chicago blues musician. He was born in Grenada County, Mississippi, United States, and learned to play the blues from listening to records by Muddy Waters and Little Walter. After moving to Chicago at the age of 19, he was signed by Cobra Records and became well known as a bluesman after the release of his first record, “All Your Love”, in 1957. He was known for his distinctive tremolo guitar playing.
Maghett moved to Chicago in 1956, where his guitar playing earned him bookings at blues clubs on the West Side. He recorded singles for Cobra Records from 1957 to 1959, including “All Your Love” and “Easy Baby”. They did not reach the record charts but had a profound influence, far beyond Chicago’s guitarists and singers. Together with recordings by Otis Rush and Buddy Guy (also Cobra artists), they were a manifesto for a new kind of blues. Around this time Magic Sam worked briefly with Homesick James Williamson.
more...Merl Saunders (February 14, 1934 – October 24, 2008) was an American multi-genre musician who played piano and keyboards, favoring the Hammond B-3 console organ.
Born in San Mateo, California, Saunders attended Polytechnic High School in San Francisco. In his first band in high school was singer Johnny Mathis. He served in the Air Force from 1953 to 1957. He worked as musical director of the Billy Williams Revue and served in a similar capacity in Oscar Brown Jr.‘s off-Broadway show, Big Time Buck White.
more...World Music with the Saltwater Band
from Elcho Island off the coast of North East Arnhem Land, Australia.
more...Daily Roots with the Twinkle Brothers
2-14-18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMsaN6r9lPU&list=PLEB3LPVcGcWZ0hsQ5_jgSMhawAnDzy1io&index=4
more...BEAU KOO JACKS on MARDI GRAS DAY 2-13-18
Neumanns in North St Paul 7-11pm
Featuring Todd Matheson, Jamie Carter, David Hamilton, Van Nixon, Paul Strickland, Larry McCabe, Art Haynes and mick laBriola; Gettin funky like nobodies business on Mardi Gras Day
more...NGC 2903 is a field barred spiral galaxy about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. It was discovered by William Herschelwho cataloged it on November 16, 1784. NGC 2905 is a bright star cloud within this galaxy. NGC 2903 has a very high speed of creating new stars in the central region.
more...Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian who rose to fame as the original lead singer and flautist of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, Gabriel launched a successful solo career with “Solsbury Hill” as his first single. His 1986 album, So, is his best-selling release and is certified triple platinum in the UK and five times platinum in the U.S. The album’s most successful single, “Sledgehammer“, won a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards.
Gabriel has been a champion of world music for much of his career. He co-founded the WOMAD festival in 1982. He has continued to focus on producing and promoting world music through his Real World Records label. He has also pioneered digital distribution methods for music, co-founding OD2, one of the first online music download services. Gabriel has also been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts. In 1980, he released the anti-apartheid single “Biko“. He has participated in several human rights benefit concerts, including Amnesty International‘s Human Rights Now! tour in 1988, and co-founded the Witness human rights organisation in 1992. Gabriel developed The Elders with Richard Branson, which was launched by Nelson Mandela in 2007.
Gabriel has won three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1987, six Grammy Awards, thirteen MTV Video Music Awards, the first Pioneer Award at the BT Digital Music Awards, the Q magazine Lifetime Achievement, the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Polar Music Prize. He was made a BMI Icon at the 57th annual BMI London Awards for his “influence on generations of music makers”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flDSqNx4fGo
more...Wardell Gray (February 13, 1921 – May 25, 1955) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist who straddled the swing and bebop periods.
Wardell Gray was born in Oklahoma City, the youngest of four children. His early childhood years were spent in Oklahoma, before moving with his family to Detroit in 1929.
In early 1935, Gray began attending Northeastern High School, and then transferred to Cass Technical High School, which is noted for having Donald Byrd, Lucky Thompson and Al McKibbon as alumni. He left in 1936, before graduating. Advised by his brother-in-law Junior Warren, as a teenager he started on the clarinet,[1] but after hearing Lester Young on record with Count Basie, he was inspired to switch to the tenor saxophone.
more...NGC 3344 is a relatively isolated barred spiral galaxy located 22.5 million light years away in the constellation Leo Minor. This galaxy belongs to the group known as the Leo spur, which is a branch of the Virgo Supercluster. NGC 3344 has the morphological classification(R)SAB(r)bc,which indicates it is a weakly barred spiral galaxy that exhibits rings and moderate to loosely wound spiral arms. There is both an inner and outer ring, with the prominent arms radiating outward from the inner ring and the slightly elliptical bar being situated inside. At the center of the bar is an HII nucleus with an angular diameter of about 3″.
more...Bill Laswell (born February 12, 1955, Salem, Illinois, and raised in Albion, Michigan) is an American bassist, producer and record label owner.
Laswell has been involved in hundreds of recordings with many collaborators from all over the world. Laswell’s music draws upon many different genres, most notably funk, various world music, jazz, dub and ambient styles. He has also played or produced music from the noisier, more aggressive end of the rock spectrum, such as hardcore punk and metal.
According to music critic Chris Brazier, “Laswell’s pet concept is ‘collision music’ which involves bringing together musicians from wildly divergent but complementary spheres and seeing what comes out.”[1] The credo of one record label run by Laswell, and which typifies much of his work, is “Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted.” Though projects arranged by Laswell may be credited under the same name and often feature the same roster of musicians, the styles and themes explored on different albums can vary dramatically: Material began as a noisy dance music project, but subsequent releases have been centered on hip hop, jazz, or backing spoken word readings by beat generation icon William S. Burroughs. Similarly, most versions of Praxis have featured guitarist Buckethead, but have explored different permutations with each new album.
Though some artists have chafed against Laswell’s distinctive recording and production style (most noticeably some of his for-hire production gigs including Motörhead, Swans and White Zombie) many other collaborations, such as with pianist Herbie Hancock and singer Iggy Pop have been lengthier and recurring.
more...Mel Powell (born Melvin Epstein) (February 12, 1923 – April 24, 1998) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, and the founding dean of the music department at the California Institute of the Arts. He served as a music educator for over 40 years, first at Mannes College of Music and Queens College, then Yale University, and finally at CalArts. During his early career he worked as a jazz pianist.
Mel Powell was born Melvin D. Epstein on February 12, 1923, in The Bronx, New York City to Russian Jewish parents, Milton Epstein and Mildred Mark Epstein. He began playing piano at age four, taking lessons from, among others, Nadia Reisenberg.
more...Pinkney “Pink” Anderson (February 12, 1900 – October 12, 1974) was an American blues singer and guitarist.
Anderson was born in Laurens, South Carolina, and raised in nearby Greenville and Spartanburg. He joined Dr. William R. Kerr of the Indian Remedy Company in 1914 to entertain the crowds while Kerr tried to sell a concoction purported to have medicinal qualities. He also toured with Leo “Chief Thundercloud” Kahdot and his medicine show, often with the harmonica player Arthur “Peg Leg Sam” Jackson, who was based in Jonesville, South Carolina.
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