Billie Holiday

Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Holiday was known for her vocal delivery and improvisation skills, which made up for her limited range and lack of formal music education.

After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs around Harlem. After being heard by producer John Hammond, who commended her voice, Holiday was signed to Brunswick Records in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson yielded the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which would later become a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday booked mainstream success with labels such as Columbia Records and Decca Records. By the late 1940s, however, Holiday was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a short prison sentence, Holiday performed a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. However, due to her drug and alcohol problems, her reputation deteriorated.

A Little Moonlight

A Little Moonlight is an album by Dianne Reeves released in 2003.

A Little Moonlight won Reeves her third consecutive Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album.

Track listing

Personnel

Cassandra Wilson

Cassandra Wilson (born December 4, 1955) is an American jazz musician, vocalist, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, Mississippi. Described by critic Gary Giddins as "a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack [who has] expanded the playing field" by incorporating blues, country, and folk music into her work, Wilson has won two Grammy Awards.

Early life and career

Cassandra Wilson is the third and youngest child of Herman Fowlkes, Jr., a guitarist, bassist, and music teacher; and Mary McDaniel, an elementary school teacher who earned her PhD in education. Her ancestry includes Fon, Yoruba, Irish and Welsh. Between her mother’s love for Motown and her father’s dedication to jazz, Wilson’s parents sparked her early interest in music.

Wilson’s earliest formal musical education consisted of classical lessons; she studied piano from the age of six to thirteen and played clarinet in the middle school concert and marching bands. When she was tired of this training, she asked her father to teach her the guitar. Instead, he gave her a lesson in self-reliance, suggesting she study Mel Bay method books. Wilson explored guitar on her own, developing what she has described as an “intuitive” approach. During this time she began writing her own songs, adopting a folk style. She also appeared in the musical theater productions, including The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy, crossing racial lines in a recently desegregated school system.

Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is a trumpeter, composer, teacher, music educator, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, United States. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and his Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Marsalis is the son of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis, Jr. (pianist), grandson of Ellis Marsalis, Sr., and brother of Branford (saxophonist), Delfeayo (trombonist), and Jason (drummer). He performed the national anthem of Super Bowl XX in 1986.

Life and career

Marsalis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, the second of six sons of Delores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., a pianist and music professor. Marsalis and wife Delores Ferdinand have six sons: Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis III (1964), Delfeayo Marsalis, Mboya Kinyatta Marsalis (1971), and Jason Marsalis. Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo, and Jason are also jazz musicians. Ellis is a poet, photographer, and network engineer based in Baltimore. At an early age, he exhibited an aptitude for music.

Moonlight

Moonlight is the light that reaches Earth from the Moon, consisting mostly of sunlight, with some starlight and earthlight reflected from those portions of its surface which the Sun's light strikes.

Illumination

The intensity of moonlight varies greatly depending on the lunar cycle but even the full Moon typically provides only about 0.1 lux illumination. When the Moon is viewed at high altitude at tropical latitudes, the illuminance can reach 0.26 lux. The full Moon is about 1,000,000 times fainter than the Sun.

The color of moonlight, particularly near full Moon, appears bluish to the human eye compared to most artificial light sources. This is because of the Purkinje effect - the light is not actually tinted blue, and although moonlight is often referred to as "silvery" it has no inherent silvery quality. The Moon's albedo is 0.136, meaning only 13.6% of sunlight incident on the Moon is reflected. Moonlight generally hampers astronomical viewing, so astronomers usually avoid making observations near full Moon.