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About Sun Ra Arkestra
Instrument: Band / ensemble / orchestra
Sun Ra Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen: Living Sky
by Mark Corroto
In 2022, Sun Ra has been gone nearly thirty years, but thanks to maestro Marshall Allen his Arkestra has survived. Allen had been a member of Sun Ra's band since the late 1950s and it has been under Allen's leadership since 1995. Fans that have enjoyed the Arkestra in concert certainly hoped for the band to record and it wasn't until the splendid Swirling (Strut) was released in 2020 that wish was fulfilled. The Marshall Allen-led the Arkestra's second offering, ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen: Living Sky
by Chris May
When Sun Ra aficionado and Omni Sound Records founder Ahmet Ulug reached out to Sun Ra Arkestra leader Marshall Allen to commission a new album from the band, he gave Allen a tight brief. Ulug said that he wanted something: “Spiritual and hypnotic... down tempo, melodic and grooving... Music that is accessible and healing." Even though the crisis the world endured in 2020 and 2021 called out for such music, Ulug's directions to the veteran sonic-warrior may seem ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra Arkestra: Nothing Is... Completed & Revisited
by Maurizio Comandini
L'etichetta svizzera Ezz-thetics sta facendo un lavoro eccellente con capolavori degli anni sessanta riproposti in edizione da loro stessi definita 'revisited' che cerca di fare ordine e chiarezza anche su momenti un po' dimenticati che meritano di essere riscoperti e pienamente apprezzati. Tutto questo è ancora più necessario quando ci troviamo alle prese con la discografia di Sun Ra, uno dei primi artisti a scegliere di auto-prodursi con la mitica etichetta Saturn, piena di episodi memorabili ma ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra Arkestra: Heliocentric Worlds 1 & 2 Revisited
by Chris May
Heliocentric Worlds 1 & 2 Revisited presents in their entirety, newly and luminously remastered, the two albums which on release by ESP Disk in 1965 led, if not to actual commercial breakthrough for Sun Ra—who had been recording, obscurely, under his own name since the late 1940s—then at least to a heightened level of visibility for him and his music in the burgeoning transatlantic counterculture. Ra was no more an acid-tripping psych bandleader than was Frank Zappa; both musicians were ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra Arkestra, Dan Rosenbloom, Awakening Orchestra, Grassy Knoll & New Releases
by Ludovico Granvassu
The second part of this week's edition of Mondo Jazz revolves around the Chicago-Paris-Brussels triangle, with forays in the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco scenes, to deliver great much awaited new releases by the Sun Ra Arkestra, The Grassy Knoll and The Awakening Orchestra. To put the wheels in motion, the high-octane music of Dan Rosenboom. That and much more... Happy listening! Playlist Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" ...
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 ReadingVilnius Jazz 2019
by Ian Patterson
Vilnius Jazz 2019 Russian Drama Theatre Vilnius, Lithuania October 16-20, 2019 Is a jazz festival primarily about entertainment, or is it meant to challenge the expectations of its audience? Does programming risk mean financial suicide? What responsibility does a festival have to promote young, emerging talent? What place do women have in jazz today? How does jazz benefit from collaborations with other art forms? Does jazz carry a diplomatic passport, or should its practitioners ...
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