Ronald Mathews (December 2, 1935, in New York City – June 28, 2008, in Brooklyn) was an American jazz pianist who worked with Max Roach from 1963 to 1968 and Art Blakey‘s Jazz Messengers. He acted as lead in recording from 1963 and 1978–79. His most recent work was in 2008, as both a mentor and musician with Generations, a group of jazz musicians headed by veteran drummer Jimmy Cobb. He contributed two new compositions for the album that was released by San Francisco State University’s International Center for the Arts on September 15, 2008. Critics have compared him to pianists Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and McCoy Tyner.
see full post...Tal Wilkenfeld (born 2 December 1986) is an Australian singer, songwriter, bassist, and guitarist. She has performed with artists including Jeff Beck, Prince, Incubus, Eric Clapton, Herbie Hancock, and Mick Jagger. In 2008, Wilkenfeld was voted “The Year’s Most Exciting New Player” in a Bass Player magazine readers’ choice poll. In 2013, Wilkenfeld was awarded the Bass Player magazine’s “Young Gun Award” by Don Was; she then performed “Chelsea Hotel” by Leonard Cohen.
Wilkenfeld is a bandleader of her own bands in which she sings, plays bass, and plays guitar. In earlier work, she was backed by musicians such as Wayne Krantz and Vinnie Colaiuta. She opened for the Who on the North American part of The Who Hits 50! tour in 2016. In 2016, she released a single entitled “Corner Painter” featuring Blake Mills and Benmont Tench. Also in 2016, Rolling Stone said that Wilkenfeld was “working on new music that sees her evolving from an instrumental prodigy into a formidable singer-songwriter.” On 15 March 2019, Wilkenfeld released her vocal debut album Love Remains, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Heatseeker charts on the first week of its release.[5] Love Remains has been highly praised by the press and was featured in Rolling Stone, Relix, Paste, Billboard, and Forbes. Rolling Stone described her vocal debut as having “ten dense, riff-heavy tracks with brazen, introspective lyrics—prove her songwriting abilities.” Wilkenfeld has also been a guest on popular podcasts, including WTF with Marc Maron, and Bill Burr‘s Monday Morning Podcast.
Wilkenfeld has recorded on projects with Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, Toto, Todd Rundgren, Macy Gray, Dr. John, Trevor Rabin, Jackson Browne, Joe Walsh, Rod Stewart, John Mayer, Sting, Ben Harper, David Gilmour, Pharrell, Buddy Guy, Billy Gibbons, Lee Ritenour, Hiram Bullock, Susan Tedeschi, and Hans Zimmer.
see full post...Wynton Charles Kelly (December 2, 1931 – April 12, 1971) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He is known for his lively, blues-based playing and as one of the finest accompanists in jazz. He began playing professionally at the age of 12 and was pianist on a No. 1 R&B hit at the age of 16. His recording debut as a leader occurred three years later, around the time he started to become better known as an accompanist to singer Dinah Washington, and as a member of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie‘s band. This progress was interrupted by two years in the United States Army, after which Kelly worked again with Washington and Gillespie, and played with other leaders. Over the next few years, these included instrumentalists Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley, Wes Montgomery, and Sonny Rollins, and vocalists Betty Carter, Billie Holiday, and Abbey Lincoln.
Kelly attracted the most attention as part of Miles Davis‘ band from 1959, including an appearance on the trumpeter’s Kind of Blue, often mentioned as the best-selling jazz album ever. After leaving Davis in 1963, Kelly played with his own trio, which recorded for several labels and toured the United States and internationally. His career did not develop much further, and he had difficulty finding enough work late in his career. Kelly, who was known to have epilepsy, died in a hotel room in Canada following a seizure, aged 39.
The son of Jamaican immigrants, Kelly was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 2, 1931. He began playing the piano at the age of four, but did not receive much formal training in music. He attended the High School of Music & Art and the Metropolitan Vocational High School in New York, but “[t]hey wouldn’t give us piano, so I fooled around with the bass and studied theory.
see full post...Performing for the Friday Erev Shabbat service with Inbal Sharett-Singer
see full post...This pair of merging galaxies, known to astronomers as II ZW 96, is roughly 500 million light-years from Earth and lies in the constellation Delphinus. As well as the wild swirl of the merging galaxies, many background galaxies are dotted throughout the image. The two foreground galaxies are in the process of merging and as a result have a chaotic, disturbed shape.
A merging galaxy pair cavort in this image captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This pair of galaxies, known to astronomers as II ZW 96, is roughly 500 million light-years from Earth and lies in the constellation Delphinus, close to the celestial equator. As well as the wild swirl of the merging galaxies, a menagerie of background galaxies are dotted throughout the image.
The two galaxies are in the process of merging and as a result have a chaotic, disturbed shape. The bright cores of the two galaxies are connected by bright tendrils of star-forming regions, and the spiral arms of the lower galaxy have been twisted out of shape by the gravitational perturbation of the galaxy merger. It is these star-forming regions that made II ZW 96 such a tempting target for Webb; the galaxy pair is particularly bright at infrared wavelengths thanks to the presence of the star formation.
This observation is from a collection of Webb measurements delving into the details of galactic evolution, in particular in nearby Luminous Infrared Galaxies such as II ZW 96. These galaxies, as the name suggests, are particularly bright at infrared wavelengths, with luminosities more than 100 billion times that of the Sun. An international team of astronomers proposed a study of complex galactic ecosystems — including the merging galaxies in II ZW 96 — to put Webb through its paces soon after the telescope was commissioned. Their chosen targets have already been observed with ground-based telescopes and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which will provide astronomers with insights into Webb’s ability to unravel the details of complex galactic environments.
Webb captured this merging galaxy pair with a pair of its cutting-edge instruments; NIRCam — the Near-InfraRed Camera — and MIRI, the Mid-InfraRed Instrument. If you are interested in exploring the differences between Hubble and Webb’s observations of II ZW 96, you can do so here.
Bette Midler born December 1, 1945) is an American singer, actress, comedian and author.Throughout her career, which spans over five decades, Midler has received numerous accolades, including four Golden Globe Awards, three Grammy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards and a Kennedy Center Honor, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and a British Academy Film Award.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Midler began her professional career in several off-off-Broadway plays, prior to her engagements in Fiddler on the Roof and Salvation on Broadway in the late 1960s. She came to prominence in 1970 when she began singing in the Continental Baths, a local gay bathhouse where she managed to build up a core following. Since 1970, Midler has released 14 studio albums as a solo artist, selling over 30 million records worldwide, and has received four Gold, three Platinum, and three Multiplatinum albums by RIAA. Many of her songs became chart hits, including her renditions of “The Rose“, “Wind Beneath My Wings“, “Do You Want to Dance“, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy“, and “From a Distance“. She won Grammy Awards for Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for “The Rose”, and Record of the Year for “Wind Beneath My Wings”.
Midler made her starring film debut with the musical drama The Rose (1979), which won her the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, as well as nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, and the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress. She went on to star in numerous films, including Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Ruthless People (1986), Outrageous Fortune (1987), Big Business (1988), Beaches (1988), Hocus Pocus (1993) and its sequel(2022), The First Wives Club (1996), The Stepford Wives (2004), Parental Guidance (2012), and The Addams Family (2019) and its sequel (2021). Midler also had starring roles in For the Boys (1991) and Gypsy(1993), winning two additional Golden Globe Awards for these films and receiving a second Academy Award nomination for the former.
In 2008, Midler signed a contract with Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for a residency, Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On, which ended in 2010. She starred in the Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly!, which began previews in March 2017 and premiered at the Shubert Theatre in April 2017. The show was her first leading role in a Broadway musical. Midler received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance.
see full post...Heywood Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen has received many accolades, including the most nominations (16) for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He has won four Academy Awards, ten BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Grammy Award, as well as nominations for a Emmy Award and a Tony Award. Allen was awarded an Honorary Golden Lion in 1995, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1997, an Honorary Palme d’Or in 2002, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2014. Two of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Allen began his career writing material for television in the 1950s, alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, and Neil Simon. He also published several books of short stories and wrote humor pieces for The New Yorker. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian in Greenwich Village, where he developed a monologue style (rather than traditional jokes) and the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish. During this time, he released three comedy albums, earning a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album nomination for the self-titled Woody Allen (1964).
After writing, directing, and starring in a string of slapstick comedies, such as Take the Money and Run(1969), Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), and Love and Death (1975), he directed his most successful film, Annie Hall (1977), a romantic comedy featuring Allen and his frequent collaborator Diane Keaton. The film won four Academy Awards, for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actress for Keaton. Allen has directed many films set in New York City, including Manhattan (1979), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).
Allen continued to garner acclaim, making a film almost every year, and is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of auteur filmmakers whose work has been influenced by European art cinema. His films include Interiors (1978), Stardust Memories (1980), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Radio Days (1987), Husbands and Wives (1992), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Deconstructing Harry (1997), Match Point (2005), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Midnight in Paris (2011), and Blue Jasmine (2013).[7]
In 1979, Allen began a professional and personal relationship with actress Mia Farrow. Over a decade-long period, they collaborated on 13 films. The couple separated after Allen began a relationship in 1991 with Mia’s and Andre Previn‘s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn. In 1992, Farrow publicly accused Allen of sexually abusing their adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow.[8][9] The allegation gained substantial media attention, but Allen was never charged or prosecuted, and vehemently denied the allegation. Allen married Previn in 1997. They have adopted two children.
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John Francis “Jaco” Pastorius III (/ˈdʒɑːkoʊ pæˈstɔːriəs/; December 1, 1951 – September 21, 1987) was an American jazz bassist, composer, and producer. He recorded albums as a solo artist and band leader and was a member of the jazz fusion group Weather Report from 1976 to 1981. He also collaborated with numerous artists, including Pat Metheny and Joni Mitchell.
His bass style was influenced by funk and employed the use of fretless bass, lyrical solos, bass chords and innovative use of harmonics. As of 2017, he was the only one of seven bassists inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame to have been known for their work on the electric bass, and he has been lauded as among the best bassists of all time.
Pastorius suffered from drug addiction and mental health issues and, despite his widespread acclaim, over the latter part of his life he had problems holding down jobs due to his unreliability. In frequent financial difficulties, he was often homeless in the mid-1980s. He died in 1987 as a result of injuries sustained in a beating outside a South Florida after-hours nightclub.
Since his death in 1987, his work has continued to be widely influential. He was elected to the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1988 and was the subject of the 2014 documentary film Jaco.
see full post...The strum that drives the Rumba Flamenca has five simple steps:
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Slap the top of the guitar with the flat of your right hand, muting the strings and tapping the top of the guitar
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Strum upwards across the strings with the first finger
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Strum downward across the strings with the back of one or more fingers
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Strum upwards across the strings with the back of your thumb
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Repeat for hours on end as fast as possible.
A crowded field of galaxies throngs this Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, along with bright stars crowned with Webb’s signature six-pointed diffraction spikes. The large spiral galaxy at the base of this image is accompanied by a profusion of smaller, more distant galaxies which range from fully-fledged spirals to mere bright smudges. Named LEDA 2046648, it is situated a little over a billion light-years from Earth, in the constellation Hercules. [Image description: Many stars and galaxies lie on a dark background, in a variety of colours but mostly shades of orange. Some galaxies are large enough to make out spiral arms. Along the bottom of the frame is a large, detailed spiral galaxy seen at an oblique angle, with another galaxy about one-quarter the size just beneath it. Both have a brightly glowing core, and areas of star formation which light up their spiral arms.] (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Martel)
Johnny Shuggie Otis (born Johnny Alexander Veliotes Jr.; November 30, 1953) is an American singer-songwriter, recording artist, and multi-instrumentalist.
Otis’s composition “Strawberry Letter 23” as recorded by The Brothers Johnson topped the Billboard R&B chart and reached #5 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1977. He achieved commercial success with his 1974 single “Inspiration Information” (from the album of the same title), reaching #56 on the R&B chart.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Otis is the son of rhythm and blues musician, bandleader, and impresarioJohnny Otis, who was of Greek descent, and his wife Phyllis Walker, who was of African American and Filipino descent.
see full post...Robert Lee McCollum (November 30, 1909 – November 5, 1967) was an American blues musician who played and recorded under the pseudonyms Robert Lee McCoy and Robert Nighthawk. He was the father of the blues musician Sam Carr. Nighthawk was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1983.
McCollum was born in Helena, Arkansas on November 30, 1909. He left home at an early age and became a busking musician. After a period traveling through southern Mississippi, he settled for a time in Memphis, Tennessee, where he played with local orchestras and musicians, such as the Memphis Jug Band. A particular influence during this period was Houston Stackhouse, from whom he learned to play slide guitar and with whom he performed on the radio in Jackson, Mississippi.
see full post...The main focus of the shot is, of course, van den Bergh 152 (also catalogued as LBN 531), which is perched on the top (from this point of view–North is down and East is right) of the Barnard 175 Bok globule. Also atop B175 just to the right of vdB 152 is the tiny Herbig-Haro 450, visible as a red splotch. Tycho 4467-434-1, the star that is illuminating vdB 152 was probably not born in the surrounding dust and will eventually drift away from the main structure. But for now, it seems to be kicking up a swirling maelstrom in the dust and gas belonging to B175. More prominently, the wispy supernova remnant G 110.3 +11.3 is visible in Ha coursing through the field from the Northeast toward the Southwest. Nearby is the planetary nebula Dengel-Hartl 5.
Charles Frank Mangione (/ˌmændʒiˈoʊni/ MAN-jee-OH-nee; born November 29, 1940) is an American flugelhorn player, trumpeter and composer. He came to prominence as a member of Art Blakey‘s band in the 1960s, and later co-led the Jazz Brothers with his brother, Gap. He achieved international success in 1978 with his jazz-pop single “Feels So Good“. Mangione has released more than 30 albums since 1960.
Mangione was born and raised in Rochester, New York, United States. With his pianist brother Gap, they led the Mangione Brothers Sextet/Quintet, which recorded three albums for Riverside Records, before Mangione branched out into other work. One of Chuck’s compositions for the Mangione Brothers Sextet, “Something Different,” was recorded by Cannonball Adderley on his 1961 album African Waltz. He attended the Eastman School of Music from 1958 to 1963, then joined Art Blakey‘s Jazz Messengers, for which he filled the trumpet chair previously held by Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Dorham, Bill Hardman, and Lee Morgan.
see full post...Billy Hart (born November 29, 1940) is an American jazz drummer and educator. He is known internationally for his work with Herbie Hancock‘s “Mwandishi” band in the early 1970s, as well as with Shirley Horn, Stan Getz, and Quest, among many others.
Hart was born in Washington, D.C. He grew up in close proximity of the Spotlite Club, where he first heard the music of Lee Morgan, Ahmad Jamal, and Miles Davis, among others.
Early on in his career he performed with Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, then with Buck Hill. Although he studied mechanical engineering at Howard University, he left school early to tour with Shirley Horn, whom Hart credits with accelerating his musical development. He was a sideman with the Montgomery Brothers(1961), Jimmy Smith (1964–1966), and Wes Montgomery (1966–68). Following Montgomery’s death in 1968, Hart moved to New York City, where he recorded with McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, and Pharoah Sanders (playing on his famed recording Karma in 1969), in addition to playing with Eddie Harris, Joanne Brackeen, and Marian McPartland.
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