Sun Ra Arkestra
The Arkestra lives on with Sun Ra via alternate planes and is gonna grace the stage at Eglise St. Denis with a night of exuberant intergalactic magic. Come be blessed, healed, enthralled and transported. Dancing shoes might be needed.
Sun Ra, the enigmatic jazz composer, bandleader, and philosopher, left an indelible mark on avant-garde jazz in the 1960s alongside other luminaries such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler. His unconventional music and unorthodox lifestyle made him one of the most controversial figures of his time, as he claimed to be of the "Angel Race" from Saturn and developed a complex persona centred around his "cosmic philosophy" and lyrical poetry. Sun Ra's pioneering of Afrofuturism preached awareness and peace above all else and firmly established him as an icon of the movement.
After abandoning his birth name, Sun Ra took on several other names throughout his career, including Le Sony'r Ra and Sonny Lee. He denied any connection with his birth name, insisting that it was an imaginary person who never existed. From the mid-1950s until he died in 1993, Sun Ra led The Arkestra, an ensemble with an ever-changing lineup and name that reflected the ever-changing nature of his music. The Arkestra ranged from keyboard solos to big bands of over 30 musicians and touched on virtually the entire history of jazz, from ragtime to swing music, from bebop to free jazz. Sun Ra was also a pioneer of electronic music, space music, and free improvisation and was one of the first musicians, regardless of genre, to use electronic keyboards extensively.
The Arkestra lives on with Sun Ra via alternate planes and is gonna grace the stage at Eglise St. Denis with a night of exuberant intergalactic magic. Come be blessed, healed, enthralled and transported. Dancing shoes might be needed.
Sun Ra, the enigmatic jazz composer, bandleader, and philosopher, left an indelible mark on avant-garde jazz in the 1960s alongside other luminaries such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler. His unconventional music and unorthodox lifestyle made him one of the most controversial figures of his time, as he claimed to be of the "Angel Race" from Saturn and developed a complex persona centred around his "cosmic philosophy" and lyrical poetry. Sun Ra's pioneering of Afrofuturism preached awareness and peace above all else and firmly established him as an icon of the movement.
After abandoning his birth name, Sun Ra took on several other names throughout his career, including Le Sony'r Ra and Sonny Lee. He denied any connection with his birth name, insisting that it was an imaginary person who never existed. From the mid-1950s until he died in 1993, Sun Ra led The Arkestra, an ensemble with an ever-changing lineup and name that reflected the ever-changing nature of his music. The Arkestra ranged from keyboard solos to big bands of over 30 musicians and touched on virtually the entire history of jazz, from ragtime to swing music, from bebop to free jazz. Sun Ra was also a pioneer of electronic music, space music, and free improvisation and was one of the first musicians, regardless of genre, to use electronic keyboards extensively.
