James Melvin Lunceford (June 6, 1902 – July 12, 1947) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era. Lunceford was born on a farm in the Evergreen community, west of the Tombigbee River, near Fulton, Mississippi. The 53-acre (21 ha) farm was owned by his father, James. His mother was Idella (“Ida”) Shumpert of Oklahoma City, an organist of “more than average ability”. Seven months after James Melvin was born, the family moved to Oklahoma City. The family next moved to Denver where Lunceford went to high school and studied music under Wilberforce J. Whiteman, father of Paul Whiteman, whose band was soon to acquire a national reputation. As a child in Denver, he learned several instruments. After high school, Lunceford continued his studies at Fisk University. In 1922, he played alto saxophone in a local band led by the violinist George Morrison which included Andy Kirk, another musician destined for fame as a bandleader.

In 1927, while an athletic instructor at Manassas High School in Memphis, Tennessee, Lunceford organized a student band, the Chickasaw Syncopators, whose name was changed to the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra. Under the new name, the band started its professional career in 1929, and made its first recordings in 1930. Lunceford was the first public high school band director in Memphis.

After a period of touring, in 1934 the band accepted a booking at the Harlem nightclub The Cotton Club for their revue “Cotton Club Parade” starring Adelaide Hall. The Cotton Club had already featured Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, who won their first widespread fame from their inventive shows for the Cotton Club’s all-white patrons. With their tight musicianship and the often outrageous humor in their music and lyrics, Lunceford’s orchestra made an ideal band for the club, and Lunceford’s reputation began to steadily grow.

NGC 578 is a barred spiral galaxy of the Hubble type SBc in the constellation Whale south of the celestial equator . It is estimated 72 million light years away from the Milky Way and has a diameter of about 100,000 ly.
In the same area of ​​the sky are the galaxies NGC 554 , NGC 555 , NGC 556 , among others .

The object was discovered by John Herschel on November 11, 1835 .

Peter Erskine (born June 5, 1954) is an American jazz drummer who was a member of the jazz fusion groups Weather Report and Steps Ahead.

Erskine was born in Somers Point, New Jersey, US. He began playing the drums at the age of four. He graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, then studied percussion at Indiana University.

His professional music career started in 1972 when he joined the Stan Kenton Orchestra. After three years with Kenton, he joined Maynard Ferguson for two years. In 1978 he joined Weather Report, joining Jaco Pastorius in the rhythm section. After four years and five albums with Weather Report and the Jaco Pastorius big band Word of Mouth, he joined Steps Ahead.

In 1983, he performed on the Antilles Records release Swingrass ’83. He toured the US in 1992 with Chick Corea.

Erskine splits his time as a musician and a professor at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California.

He was featured on Kate Bush‘s 2005 album Aerial, where Erskine teamed with bass player Eberhard Weber. Diana Krall, Eliane Elias, Queen Latifah and Linda Ronstadt, as well as Scottish and Finnish classical orchestras, have had Erskine perform as a featured musician.

In 2011, he appeared on stage at the Royal Opera House, London in the new opera Anna Nicole

Jerry González (June 5, 1949 – October 1, 2018) was an American bandleader, trumpeter and percussionist of Puerto Rican descent. Together with his brother, bassist Andy González, he played an important role in the development of Latin jazz during the late 20th century. During the 1970s, both played alongside Eddie Palmieri and in Manny Oquendo‘s Conjunto Libre, and from 1980 to 2018 they directed The Fort Apache Band. From 2000 to 2018, Jerry González resided in Madrid, where he fronted Los Piratas del Flamenco and El Comando de la Clave. In October 2018, he died of a heart attack after a fire in his home in Madrid.

Laura Phillips Anderson (born June 5, 1947 Glen Ellyn, Il) is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting, Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York during the 1970s, focusing particularly on language, technology, and visual imagery. She became more widely known outside the art world when her single “O Superman” reached number two on the UK singles chart in 1981. She also starred in and directed the 1986 concert film Home of the Brave.

Anderson is a pioneer in electronic music and has invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performance art shows. In 1977, she created a tape-bow violin that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow instead of horsehair and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. In the late 1990s, she collaborated with Interval Research to develop an instrument she called a “talking stick”, a six-foot (1.8 m) long baton-like MIDIcontroller that can access and replicate sounds.

Anderson met singer-songwriter Lou Reed in 1992, and she was married to him from April 2008 until his death in 2013.

Freddie Stone (born Frederick Jerome Stewart, June 5, 1947, Vallejo, California) is an American pastor and musician, best known as a co-founder, guitarist, and vocalist in the band Sly and the Family Stone, fronted by his brother Sly and including his sisters Rosie and Vet.

After leaving the band in the mid-1970s, Stone signed a short recording contract with Motown Records.

If you look closely at the faint and fuzzy centre of this picture, you will find a ghostly galaxy — the not-so-spooky-sounding UDG4 — captured using ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST).  UDG stands for ultra-diffuse galaxy: objects as large as the Milky Way but with 100 – 1000 times fewer stars. These galaxies are extremely faint and lack star-forming gas, which makes them appear almost like a fluffy cosmic cloud, or a smudge in space. Their origins remain uncertain, but astronomers speculate that they could be “failed” galaxies that lost their gas supply early in their lifetimes.  This image of UDG4 was taken as part of a study from a much larger program, the VST Early-type Galaxy Survey (VEGAS), which aims to investigate very faint structures in galaxy clusters — large groups of many galaxies bound together by gravity. The study, led by Enrichetta Iodice from the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Italy, has found several UDGs in the Hydra Cluster, but more observations are needed to elucidate their true nature. Given their flimsy appearance, UDGs can be difficult to spot. Nevertheless, the VST, equipped with its OmegaCAM camera, provides exquisite sensitivity to light, allowing astronomers to study such elusive objects.

Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an African-American experimental composer, improviser, saxophonist, and multi-instrumentalist. Braxton grew up on Chicago’s South Side and was a key early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He won acclaim for his 1969 recording For Alto, the first full-length album of solo saxophone music.

A prolific composer, Braxton has released hundreds of recordings and compositions. During six years signed to Arista Records, the diversity of his output encompassed work with many members of the AACM, including duets with co-founder and first president Muhal Richard Abrams; collaborations with electronic musician Richard Teitelbaum; a saxophone quartet with Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, and Hamiet Bluiett; compositions for four orchestras; and the ensemble arrangements of Creative Orchestra Music 1976, which was named the 1977 DownBeat Critics’ Poll Album of the Year. Many of his projects are ongoing, such as Echo Echo Mirror House Music, in which musicians “play” iPods containing the bulk of Braxton’s oeuvre, and the Ghost Trance Music series, inspired by his studies of the Native American Ghost Dance. He has released the first six operas in a series he calls the Trillium Opera Complex.

Braxton identifies as a “trans-idiomatic” composer and has repeatedly opposed the idea of a rigid dichotomy between improvisation and composition. He has written extensively about the “language music” system that forms the basis for his work^[12] and developed a philosophy of “world creativity” in his Tri-Axium Writings.

Braxton taught at Mills College from 1985 to 1990 and was Professor of Music at Wesleyan University from 1990 until his retirement at the end of 2013. He is the artistic director of the Tri-Centric Foundation, a nonprofit he founded in 1994 to support the preservation and production of works by Braxton and other artists “in pursuit of ‘trans-idiomatic’ creativity”.

Michelle Phillips (born Holly Michelle Gilliam; June 4, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and former model. She rose to fame as a vocalist in the musical quartet the Mamas and the Papas in the mid-1960s. Her voice was described by Time magazine as the “purest soprano in pop music.” She later established a successful career as an actress in film and television in the 1970s. Phillips is the last surviving original member of the Mamas and the Papas.

A native of Long Beach, California, she spent her early life in Los Angeles and Mexico City, raised by her widowed father. While working as a model in San Francisco, she met and married John Phillips in 1962 and went on to co-found the vocal group the Mamas and the Papas in 1965. The band rose to fame with their popular singles “California Dreamin’” and “Creeque Alley“, both of which she co-wrote. They released five studio albums before their dissolution in 1970. With John Phillips, she gave birth to a daughter, singer Chynna Phillips.

After the breakup of the Mamas and the Papas and her divorce from John Phillips, she transitioned into acting, appearing in a supporting part in The Last Movie (1971) before being cast as Billie Frechette in the critically acclaimed crime biopic Dillinger (1973), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. In 1974, she had lead roles in two television films: the crime feature The Death Squad, and the teen drama The California Kid, in the latter of which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. She went on to appear in a number of films throughout the remainder of the 1970s, including Ken Russell‘s Valentino (1977), playing Natacha Rambova, and the thriller Bloodline (1979). She released her only solo album, Victim of Romance, in 1977.

Phillips appeared in a number of films in the 1980s, first in the comedy The Man with Bogart’s Face (1980). The following year, she co-starred with Tom Skerritt in the nature-themed horror film Savage Harvest (1981), followed by the television films Secrets of a Married Man (1984) and The Covenant (1985). In 1987, she joined the cast of the series Knots Landing, portraying Anne Matheson, the mother of Paige Matheson (portrayed by Nicollette Sheridan) until the series’ 1993 conclusion.

She subsequently had supporting roles in the comedy film Let It Ride (1989) and the psychological thriller Scissors (1991). Phillips continued to appear in independent films after the millennium, with supporting parts in Jane White is Sick and Twisted (2002) and Kids in America (2005) and had recurring guest roles in the television series That’s Life (2001–2002) and 7th Heaven (2001–2004). She was an outspoken critic of the Bush administration in the mid-2000s and has also advocated the legalization of recreational cannabis.

Oliver Edward Nelson (June 4, 1932 – October 28, 1975) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger, composer, and bandleader.^[1]His 1961 Impulse! album The Blues and the Abstract Truth (1961) is regarded as one of the most significant recordings of its era. The centerpiece of the album is the definitive version of Nelson’s composition, “Stolen Moments“. Other important recordings from the early 1960s are More Blues and the Abstract Truth and Sound Pieces, both also on Impulse!.

Oliver Nelson was born into a musical family in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. His brother was a saxophonist who played with Cootie Williams in the 1940s, and his sister sang and played piano. Nelson began learning to play the piano when he was six and started on the saxophone at eleven. Beginning in 1947 he played in “territory” bands in and around Saint Louis before joining the Louis Jordan band where he stayed from 1950 to 1951, playing alto saxophone and arranging charts for Jordan’s band.

In 1952, Nelson underwent military service in the United States Marines Corps playing woodwinds in the 3rd Marine Division band in Japan and Korea. It was in Japan that Nelson attended a concert by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and heard Maurice Ravel‘s Ma mere l’Oye and Paul Hindemith‘s Symphony in E Flat. Nelson later recalled that this “‘was the first time that I had heard really modern music for back in St. Louis I hadn’t even known that Negroes were allowed to go to concerts. I realized everything didn’t have to sound like Beethoven or Brahms … . It was then that I decided to become a composer'”.

Teddy Kotick (June 4, 1928 – April 17, 1986) was a jazz bassist, who appeared as a sideman with many of the leading figures of the 1940s and 1950s, including Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw, Horace Silver, Phil Woods and Bill Evans. He was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Kotick never recorded as a leader. He died of a brain tumor in 1986, aged 57.

Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is some 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter. It’s the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. Omega Centauri’s red giant stars (with a yellowish hue) are easy to pick out in this sharp, color telescopic view.

Curtis Lee Mayfield (June 3, 1942 – December 26, 1999) was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer, and one of the most influential musicians behind soul and politically conscious African-American music. He first achieved success and recognition with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted group The Impressions during the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s, and later worked as a solo artist.

Mayfield started his musical career in a gospel choir. Moving to the North Side of Chicago, he met Jerry Butler in 1956 at the age of 14, and joined the vocal group The Impressions. As a songwriter, Mayfield became noted as one of the first musicians to bring more prevalent themes of social awareness into soul music. In 1965, he wrote “People Get Ready” for the Impressions, which was ranked at no. 24 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song received numerous other awards, and was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, as well as being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

After leaving the Impressions in 1970 in the pursuit of a solo career, Mayfield released several albums, including the soundtrack for the blaxploitationfilm Super Fly in 1972. The soundtrack was noted for its socially conscious themes, mostly addressing problems surrounding inner city minorities such as crime, poverty and drug abuse. The album was ranked at no. 72 on Rolling Stone’s list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.^[9]

Mayfield was paralyzed from the neck down after lighting equipment fell on him during a live performance at Wingate Field in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, on August 13, 1990. Despite this, he continued his career as a recording artist, releasing his final album New World Order in 1996. Mayfield won a Grammy Legend Award in 1994 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. He is a double inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of the Impressions in 1991, and again in 1999 as a solo artist. He was also a two-time Grammy Hall of Fame inductee. He died from complications of type 2 diabetes at the age of 57 on December 26, 1999.