Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazzpianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions). Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie.

The second of eleven children, Williams was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in the East Libertyneighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula, a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the starexpelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking down a helix. The remnant central stellar core, destined to become a white dwarf star, glows in light so energetic it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce. The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius) and spans about 2.5 light-years. The featured picturewas taken with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) located atop a dormant volcano in Hawaii, USA. A close-up of the inner edge of the Helix Nebula shows complex gas knots of unknown origin.

William Kreutzmann Jr. (/ˈkrɔɪtsmɑːn/ KROYTS-mahn; born May 7, 1946) is an American drummer and founding member of the rock band Grateful Dead. He played with the band for its entire thirty-year career, usually alongside fellow drummer Mickey Hart, and has continued to perform with former members of the Grateful Dead in various lineups, and with his own bands BK3, 7 Walkers and Billy & the Kids.

Kreutzmann was born in Palo Alto, California, the son of Janice Beryl (née Shaughnessy) and William Kreutzmann Sr. His father was of German descent. His maternal grandfather was football coach and innovator Clark Shaughnessy.

Admirl Amos Easton (May 7, 1905 – June 8, 1968), better known by the stage name Bumble Bee Slim, was an American Piedmont blues singer and guitarist.

Easton was born in Brunswick, Georgia, United States. Several original sources confirm that he spelled his first name “Admirl”. Around 1920 he joined the Ringling Brothers circus. He then returned to Georgia and was briefly married before heading north on a freight train to Indianapolis, where he settled in 1928. There he met and was influenced by the pianist Leroy Carr and the guitarist Scrapper Blackwell.

Johannes Brahms  7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the “Three Bs” of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.

Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, voice, and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire.

Brahms has been considered both a traditionalist and an innovator, by his contemporaries and by later writers. His music is rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. Embedded within those structures are deeply Romantic motifs. While some contemporaries found his music to be overly academic, his contribution and craftsmanship were admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The detailed construction of Brahms’s works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.

Denys Justin Wright (6 May 1924 – 8 February 1992), known professionally as Denny Wright, was a British jazz guitarist.

A session musician for many years, Wright frequently acted as arranger and “fixer” for recording sessions. He was a prolific jazz and orchestra composer. He led many bands, from small ensembles to night club bands to orchestras. He worked with Latin American and Jamaican bands, including Kenny Graham‘s Afro-Cubists and Mike McKenzie (jazz musician)‘s Quartet. He played with the Carl Barriteau orchestra, the Decca Records house band under Phil Green, and occasionally the Glenn Miller band. Wright was voted the 1980 BBC Jazz Society Musician of the Year.

During his career, he worked with Stéphane Grappelli, Lonnie Donegan, Johnny Duncan, Digby Fairweather, Ella Fitzgerald, Ken Snakehips Johnson, Billy Eckstine, Fapy Lafertin, Russ Conway, Biréli Lagrène, Humphrey Lyttelton, Nigel Kennedy, and George Shearing.

Although best known as a guitarist, his favourite instrument was piano, the only musical instrument he would play at home. Travellin’ Blues by Johnny Duncan and the Bluegrass Boys feature Wright’s piano playing.

David Friesen (born May 6, 1942 in Tacoma, Washington) is an American jazz bassist. He plays double bass and electric upright bass.

Friesen began playing bass while serving in the United States Army in Germany. He played with John Handyand Marian McPartland and following this, with Joe Henderson; in 1975, he toured in Europe with Billy Harper. His first album as a session leader appeared that year. In 1976, he began collaborating with guitarist John Stowell; the pair would work together often. He appeared with Ted Curson at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1977. Following this, he worked with Ricky Ford, Duke Jordan, Mal Waldron, and Paul Horn. His 1989 album Other Times, Other Places reached No. 11 on the U.S. Billboard Top Jazz Albums chart. He has also played with Chick Corea, Michael Brecker, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Garrett, Dizzy Gillespie, and Mal Waldron.

Hasaan Ibn Ali (born William Henry Langford, Jr.; May 6, 1931 – 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer.

Ibn Ali was strongly influenced by Elmo Hope, and his playing was rapid and intense, retaining a sense of rhythm even when his style became increasingly unconventional. Only one recording of his playing – The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hasaan – was released in his lifetime. Ibn Ali built a reputation in Philadelphia, where he influenced musicians including John Coltrane, but he remained little known elsewhere.

Hasaan Ibn Ali was born William Henry Langford, Jr. in Philadelphia on May 6, 1931. His mother was a domestic worker. In 1946 (aged 15), he toured with trumpeter Joe Morris‘s rhythm and blues band. In 1950, he played locally with Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, J. J. Johnson, Max Roach, and others. Based in Philadelphia, Ibn Ali freelanced and acquired a reputation locally as “an original composer and theorist”, in musicologist Lewis Porter‘s words. The pianist performed with Horace Arnold in New York City in 1959, and again in 1961–62, in a trio with Henry Grimes.