Home » Jazz Articles » Knoel Scott
Jazz Articles about Knoel Scott
Sun Ra Arkestra: Swirling
by Ian Patterson
Though Sun Ra departed Earth in 1993, his music has continued to thrive, first under the stewardship of John Gilmore and, since 1995, by the remarkable Marshall Allen who turned 96 in May 2020. A live Arkestra show still contains many of the elements that have been present since the 1950s and '60s--color, pageantry and music boasting the entire history of jazz. There have also been some extraordinary continuities in the personnel of the band, with several members present since ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra Arkestra: Swirling
by Chris May
Saturn moved into the ascendant in October 2020 when the Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen released its first studio album in over twenty years. Swirling presents new arrangements of both well-known and more obscure Ra tunes, played by a fifteen-piece lineup which includes band veterans and relative newcomers. It is a welcome addition to the Arkestra's near seventy-year catalogue. When Ra passed in 1993, tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, an on-off band ...
Continue ReadingKing Khan: The Infinite Ones
by Chris May
Something about the vibe of this completely wonderful album, and the milieu which its record label inhabits, puts one in mind of Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's self-published limited-editions of the 1960s. These were, according to information given on page three, “Printed, published, freaked out, & zapped by the Fuck You/ press at a secret grope-bunker somewhere in the Lower East Side, New York City, U.S.A." King Khan (a.k.a. A.A. Khan or the artist formerly known as The ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra Arkestra: Seductive Fantasy
by Ian Patterson
It seems entirely fitting that “Seductive Fantasy," the single from the Sun Ra Arkestra's first studio album in twenty years, should be a reworking of an old song, one that dates back over forty years to On Jupiter (El Saturn, 1979). With Sun Ra it was ever thus; old is new and new is old. The original “Seductive Fantasy" was a sprawling, seventeen-minute affair that morphed from loose groove and extended soloing into increasingly abstract, and almost arrhythmic terrain. Significantly ...
Continue Reading
