Edgar Gómez (born October 4, 1944) is a jazz double bassist born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio from 1966 to 1977.

Gómez moved with his family from Puerto Rico at a young age to New York, where he was raised. He started on double bass in the New York City school system at the age of eleven and at age thirteen went to the New York City High School of Music & Art. He played in the Newport Festival Youth Band (led by Marshall Brown) from 1959 to 1961, and graduated from Juilliard in 1963.

He played with musicians such as Gerry Mulligan, Marian McPartland, Paul Bley, Steps Ahead, and Chick Corea. He spent a total of eleven years with the Bill Evans Trio, which included performances in the United States, Europe and Asia, as well as dozens of recordings.

His career mainly consists of working as an accompanist, a position suited for his quick reflexes and flexibility. In addition to working as a studio musician for many famous jazz musicians, he has recorded as a leader for Columbia Records, Projazz and Stretch. Many of his recent recordings as a leader are co-led by the jazz pianist Mark Kramer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybv6tqH4O9Y

Steve Swallow (born October 4, 1940) is an American jazz fusion bassist and composer, known for his collaborations with Jimmy Giuffre, Gary Burton, and Carla Bley. He was one of the first jazz double bassists to switch entirely to electric bass guitar.

Born in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, United States, Swallow studied piano and trumpet, as a child, before turning to the double bass at age 14. While attending a prep school, he began trying his hand in jazz improvisation. In 1960, he left Yale University, where he was studying composition, and settled in New York City, playing at the time in Jimmy Giuffre‘s trio along with Paul Bley. After joining Art Farmer‘s quartet in 1963,^[1] Swallow began to write. It is in the 1960s that his long-term association with Gary Burton‘s various bands began.

Amos Leon Thomas Jr. (October 4, 1937 – May 8, 1999), known professionally as Leon Thomas, was an American jazz and blues vocalist, born in East St. Louis, Illinois, and known for his bellowing glottal-stop style of free jazz singing in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Leon Thomas was born Amos Thomas, Jr. on October 4, 1937, in East St. Louis, Illinois. He studied music at Tennessee State University. At the time of his studies, he had begun a singing career as a guest vocalist for the jazz bands of percussionist Armando Peraza, saxophonist Jimmy Forrest, and guitarist Grant Green. His musical development at this time was shaped in part by seeing saxophonist John Coltrane perform in trumpeter Miles Davis‘s sextet during the late 1950s. Thomas moved to New York City in 1959, singing at the Apollo Theater as a vocalist for acts such as jazz ensemble The Jazz Messengers and singer Dakota Staton. In 1961, he joined the Count Basie Orchestra but soon left after being conscripted into the army.

Acclaimed Brazilian Guitarist Sebastião Tapajós Dies at 79. Renowned Brazilian guitarist Sebastião Tapajós died on Saturday, October 2, 2021 in Santarem, Brazil. Sebastião Tapajós was one of Brazil’s most brilliant guitarists, well known in Brazil and Europe. Sebastião Tapajós (April 16, 1943 – October 2, 2021) was a Brazilian guitarist and composer from Santarém (Pará). He began learning guitar from his father when he was nine years old, and later studied at the Conservatório de Lisboa and at the Instituto de Cultura Hispânica de Madrid. In 1998 he composed the soundtrack for the local Pará film “Lendas Amazônicas”. In the 2000s, Tapajós performed in Europe. He recorded more than 50 albums in his career.

Counting color patches in the featured image, you might estimate that the most information that this 2D digital image can hold is about 60 (horizontal) x 50(vertical) x 256 (possible colors) = 768,000 bits. However, the yet-unproven Holographic Principle states that, counter-intuitively, the information in a 2D panel can include all of the information in a 3D room that can be enclosed by the panel. The principle derives from the idea that the Planck length, the length scale where quantum mechanics begins to dominate classical gravity, is one side of an area that can hold only about one bit of information. The limit was first postulated by physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft in 1993. It can arise from generalizations from seemingly distant speculation that the information held by a black hole is determined not by its enclosed volume but by the surface area of its event horizon. The term “holographic” arises from a hologram analogy where three-dimension images are created by projecting light through a flat screen. Beware, some people staring at the featured image may not think it encodes just 768,000 bits — nor even 256^3,000 bit permutations — rather they might claim it encodes a three-dimensional teapot.

Kevin Roosevelt Moore (born October 3, 1951), known as Keb’ Mo’, is an American blues musician and five-time Grammy Award winner. He is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter, living in Nashville, Tennessee. He has been described as “a living link to the seminal Delta blues that travelled up the Mississippi River and across the expanse of America”. His post-modern blues style is influenced by many eras and genres, including folk, rock, jazz, pop and country. The moniker “Keb Mo” was coined by his original drummer, Quentin Dennard, and picked up by his record label as a “street talk” abbreviation of his given name.

From early on, Keb’ Mo’s parents, who were from Louisiana and Texas, instilled him with a great appreciation for the blues and gospel music. By adolescence, he was an accomplished guitarist.

Keb’ Mo’ started his musical career playing the steel drums in a calypso band. He moved on to play in a variety of blues and backup bands throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He first started recording in the early 1970s with Jefferson Airplane violinist Papa John Creach through an R&B group. Creach hired him when Moore was 21 years old; Moore appeared on four of Creach’s albums: Filthy!, Playing My Fiddle for You, I’m the Fiddle Man and Rock Father. Keb’ Mo’s first gold record was received for a song, “Git Fiddler”, which he co-wrote with Creach on Jefferson Starship‘s Red Octopus. Red Octopus hit number one on the Billboard 200 in 1975.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gel6hQEkJqM

Stephen Michael Reich ( born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal musicin the mid to late 1960s.

Reich’s work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. His compositional style reflects his explicit rejection of Western classical traditions, serialism, and indeterminacy, because, unlike these traditions, he sought to create music in which the compositional process was discernible in the music itself. Reich describes this concept in his essay, “Music as a Gradual Process,” by stating, “I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.” To do so, his music employs the technique of phase shifting, in which a phrase is slightly altered over time, in a flow that is clearly perceptible to the listener. His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns, as on the early compositions It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966), and the use of simple, audible processes, as on Pendulum Music (1968) and Four Organs (1970). The 1978 recording Music for 18 Musicians would help entrench minimalism as a movement. Reich’s work took on a darker character in the 1980s with the introduction of historical themes as well as themes from his Jewish heritage, notably Different Trains (1988).

Reich’s style of composition has influenced many contemporary composers and groups, especially in the US. Writing in The Guardian, music critic Andrew Clements suggested that Reich is one of “a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history”.

Ronald Wayne Laws (born October 3, 1950) is an American jazz, jazz fusion, smooth jazz saxophonist. He is the younger brother of jazz flutist Hubert Laws, jazz vocalist Eloise Laws and the older brother of Debra Laws.

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, United States, Laws is the fifth of eight children. He started playing the saxophone at the age of 11. He attended Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, for two years.

In 1971, Laws journeyed to Los Angeles, California to embark upon a musical career. He started off by performing with trumpeter Hugh Masekela. In 1972, Laws joined the band Earth, Wind & Firewhere he played saxophone and flute on their album Last Days and Time. After 18 months working with Earth, Wind and Fire, he decided to become a solo artist. In 1975, Laws issued his debut album entitled Pressure Sensitive on Blue Note Records. The album reached No. 25 on the Billboard Top Soul Albums chart. In 1976, Laws went on to release his second LP Fever. The album reached No. 13 on the Billboard Top Soul LPs chart.

Earle Lavon “Von” Freeman Sr. (October 3, 1923 – August 11, 2012) was an American hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Freeman as a young child was exposed to jazz. His father, George, a city policeman, was a close friend of Louis Armstrongwith Armstrong living at the Freeman house when he first arrived in Chicago.

Freeman’s father taught him to play piano and bought him his first saxophone when he was seven. His musical education was furthered at DuSable High School, where his band director was Walter Dyett. Freeman began his professional career at the age of 16 in Horace Henderson‘s Orchestra.

Freeman enlisted into the Navy during World War II and was trained at Camp Robert Smalls in Chicago. “All the great musicians ended up at Great Lakes”, he recalled. “It was an incubator for the best and the brightest lights in the jazz world at that time, and the musical jam sessions were simply phenomenal.” After training, he was sent to Hawaii as part of the Hellcats stationed at Barbers Point Naval Air Station in a band that starred Harry “Pee Wee” Jackson, the trumpeter from Cleveland whose nickname was Gabriel. The Hellcats were frequent winners of the islands’ competitive Battle of the Bands competitions and included musicians who had formerly played in bands fronted by Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Lucky Millinder, Les Hite, Count Basie, Fats Waller, and Tiny Bradshaw.

R. Prasanna (better known as Guitar Prasanna), is a pioneer in performing Carnatic music on the guitar. He also plays jazz, progressive rock, and world fusion.

Prasanna grew up in Chennai, India and fell in love with the guitar at age of five after hearing his neighbor play. He received his first guitar when he was ten years old and would try to play Tamil and Hindi film songs and imitate the sounds of his sister’s Carnatic singing with the instrument. Prasanna’s interest in Western pop music developed when his father’s colleague gave him some cassette tapes with songs by the Bee Gees, ABBA, Toto, Peaches and Herb, and the Pointer Sisters.

While still in high school he began making a reputation as a guitarist with local band XIth Commandment. During his years studying naval architecture at Indian institute of Technology, Madras(where he also met his wife Shalini), he toured India with his rock bands (The Haze and then Shakuni & the Birds of Prey), covering songs by Santana, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Rush, Steely Dan, Jethro Tull, and the Scorpions and compositions like “Peaceful” and “Blues for Saraswati”. Prasanna’s musical development led him to blues and jazz. After working as a software consultant, he gave up a career in engineering and IT and moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music where he majored in Jazz and Classical Composition.

October 2nd 1966. Kenny Rittenhouse received a Bachelor’s Degree in music from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1988 and a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from the University of Maryland in 2006. He also did graduate work on trumpet and in jazz at the Eastman School of Music, and at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA where he studied with Roger Sherman of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Mr. Rittenhouse was a member of The United States Army Band (Pershing’s Own) in Washington, DC. from 1990-2020. This is the premier band of the Army. He performed with The U.S. Army Blues Jazz Ensemble. As member of the Army Blues, he has shared the stage alongside Ernie Andrews, Kevin Mahogany, Lou Rawls, Wycliff Gordon, Doc Severinsen, Arturo Sandoval, and Sean Jones.  As a member of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, he has toured nationally and internationally with jazz flutist Hubert Laws and vocalist Kurt Elling. As a past member of the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra led by trumpeter Sean Jones, he has shared the stage with Jazz legends such as Jimmy Heath, Ahmad Jamal, and Freddy Cole.

Mr. Rittenhouse currently holds the Applied Trumpet Instructor position at Morgan State University. Before teaching at Morgan State, he taught Jazz Trumpet at George Mason University for the past 14 years. For over 25 years Mr. Rittenhouse has led his own jazz quartet performing in and around the Washington, DC area with many great jazz artists including Larry Willis, Ralph Peterson, Don Braden, Buck Hill, and Steve Wilson, and Butch Warren. The Kenny Rittenhouse Ensemble is one of the hardest swinging jazz groups in the greater DC metro area.  The group, under the direction of trumpeter Kenny Rittenhouse, was formed several years ago and has appeared in such venues as Blues Alley, Bohemian Caverns, and Twins Jazz Club.  The group recorded their first release (a sextet) in 2006 titled “The Francis Suite”.  Their second release, recorded in February 2013 is titled “New York Suite”.  It’s a hard swinging septet playing mostly original songs highlighting traditional straight ahead jazz with a bit of Funk & R&B in the mix.