{"id":12403,"date":"2017-03-07T05:30:29","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T10:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=12403"},"modified":"2017-03-06T09:09:44","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T14:09:44","slug":"album-review-sun-ra-and-his-arkestra-at-inter-media-arts-1991","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/07\/album-review-sun-ra-and-his-arkestra-at-inter-media-arts-1991\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Sun Ra and His Arkestra &#8212; At Inter-Media Arts 1991"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-12404\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/sunra_ima.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"298\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/sunra_ima.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/sunra_ima-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Sonic explorer <strong>Sun Ra<\/strong> was quite prolific during his lifetime; in fact archivists \u2013 those you&#8217;d expect to know \u2013 can&#8217;t accurately tally just how many albums the man released. And long after his death, reissues and newly-discovered recordings come out with surprising regularity.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, some of the latter tend toward poor fidelity; their importance may not be thusly diminished, but their utility tends more toward historical import than anything approaching listening pleasure. Which isn&#8217;t to say that Sun Ra was ever what anyone would call \u201ceasy listening.\u201d His admixture of bluesy, swinging jazz, electronics and avant-garde textures can be foreboding for the musically timid or unadventurous.<\/p>\n<p>Thank goodness this new release scores high marks on all counts. It&#8217;s weird, to be sure \u2013 this is Sun Ra, after all \u2013 but it&#8217;s a superbly-recorded live date, one in which all of the instrumentation and vocals are crystalline. In fact the New York City performance was broadcast over the air on WNYC radio.<\/p>\n<p>Longtime Sun Ra associate <strong>June Tyson<\/strong> provides here soulful and nimble vocals, sometimes harmonizing with <strong>Michael Ray<\/strong>, abetted by several male vocalists. A sixteen-piece band takes the assembled audience on a musical trip through Sun Ra&#8217;s cosmos. It&#8217;s several minutes into the set before we&#8217;re treated to a solo, but it \u2013 and the others that follow \u2013 is worth waiting for.<\/p>\n<p>The set list is trademark Sun Ra: a mix of originals and his own reinventions of works by other notable composers (<strong>Duke Ellington<\/strong>, <strong>Johnny Mercer<\/strong>). And a Sun Ra favorite, \u201cWe Travel the Spaceways\u201d closes the set and provides some conceptual continuity with two other releases from Modern Harmonic, <i>Space Songs<\/i> and <i>Man in Space with Sounds<\/i> (both reviewed separately, and neither having the slightest to do with Sun Ra).<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes half the band seems to be playing a different piece than the rest of the musicians; that tonal clash is often precisely the point. At its best, Sun Ra&#8217;s music always challenged the listener&#8217;s notions about what did and didn&#8217;t \u201cwork,\u201d and the 2CD <i>At Inter-Media Arts 1991<\/i> is an exemplar in that regard. That it&#8217;s of such high fidelity and superb performance makes it even more highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sonic explorer Sun Ra was quite prolific during his lifetime; in fact archivists \u2013 those you&#8217;d expect to know \u2013 can&#8217;t accurately tally just how many albums the man released. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,65],"tags":[2973,2083],"class_list":["post-12403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jazz","category-review","tag-modern-harmonic","tag-sun-ra","cat-42-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12405,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12403\/revisions\/12405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}