Browse by Artist: SUN RA & HIS ARKESTRA

Artist:	SUN RA & HIS ARKESTRA
Title:	Music From Tomorrow's World
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 237CD

Completely unissued, much-speculated material from their 1960 Chicago-based era. "If the Wonder Inn recordings have been much speculated over during the four decades since they were made, a studio date from someplace called Majestic Hall rings only very distant bells, even for those who played on it. Majestic Hall was a fantastic session, with a slightly larger octet incarnation of the Arkestra, including Cohran on cornet, Gilmore again in gorgeous form, Marshall Allen and two other saxophonists: Gene Easton on alto and Ronald Wilson on baritone. Drummer Robert Barry is explosive on the latter track, and as with the Wonder Inn tracks, bassist Ronnie Boykins was the Arkestra's unfailing rudder. Behind it all looms the creative fireball named Sun Ra, concocting ceaselessly creative intros, comping imaginatively, or going without horns on the fragment of 'Interstellar Lo-Ways' that closes the disc. Here are two late-breaking installations from a single season in the story of Sun Ra's Chicago period, each focused on a different aspect of his concept. The Wonder Inn: Arkestra in motion, as part of the community, engaging the underground jazz intelligentsia on the south side. Majestic Hall: the grand scale of Ra's compositional and arranging genius, the heroic efforts of his band. Yet a couple more key pieces in the big puzzle that is Sun Ra's master-oeuvre."

Artist:	SUN RA & HIS ARKESTRA
Title:	Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 265CD

"The third deluxe Ra reissue in the new O-Card format from the UMS, released in conjunction with El Saturn Records is here: a superb reissue of a delicious, seldom heard Saturn Records document from '70 -- replete with two alternate takes of a previously unissued classic AND an 'Untitled' piece from the original '77 sessions... all available for the first time on CD!" "Sun Ra's career-long commitment to his Arkestra allowed the pianist and bandleader little time for the elaboration of less populous projects. There were brief, tantalizing glimpses, however, into his small group concept -- including a rash of recordings made in the mid 1970s. There are, for instance, two great double-LPs of quartet music, tenor saxophonist John Gilmore gloriously forward, made for the Italian Horo label in 1978. A year prior, a stripped-down group made a set of studio recordings focused on standard jazz songbook material, as well as some original music by Ra, that was issued on Saturn as Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue. As a special treat, to augment this extremely rare Saturn LP and show how Ra developed the idea for one of his arrangements, two alternative versions of the poignant 'I'll Get By' are included -- taken from a session slated May 3, 1973 by Gilmore. In the distance, the muffled remnant of a previous track appears, taped over on this home recording, the almost in-sync backwards drums providing a low-key element of surreality." --John Corbett, Chicago, October, 2007

Artist:	SUN RA & HIS ARKESTRA
Title:	The Cry of Jazz
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	DVD
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	ALP 2865DVD

"Filmed in Chicago, finished in 1959, the Cry of Jazz is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race, a forecast of what he called 'the death of jazz.' A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it also features the only known footage of visionary pianist Sun Ra from his beloved Chicago period. Ample images of tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and the rest of Ra's Arkestra in Windy City nightclubs, all shot in glorious black & white. Rarely seen in cinemas, this is the first commercial release of the Cry of Jazz, transferred from a pristine print and featuring an otherwise unreleased Arkestral soundtrack." Region Zero; 35 min., 5.1 surround sound.

Artist:	SUN RA & HIS ARKESTRA
Title:	The Great Lost Sun Ra Albums: Cymbals/Crystal Spears
Label:	EVIDENCE
Format:	2CD
Price:	$27.00
Catalog #:	ECD 22217

"This 2-CD box is comprised of two albums originally intended for release on ABC's Impulse Records but never issued. After Impulse abruptly ended a licensing agreement with Sun Ra's El Saturn label, the two unreleased album masters were boxed up and returned to Saturn, where they languished in obscurity for the next 27 years. Evidence has remixed the original four-track tapes down to two-track stereo. Former Impulse Records head Ed Michel wrote the notes, which chronicle the short, strange history of Sun Ra's major label tenure."

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