Purple Art
[July 9 2014]
“Sun Ra, When Sun Comes Out” at David Nolan Gallery, New York
In May 2014, the world celebrated the hundredth birthday of musician, bandleader, composer and thinker, Sun Ra, whose terrestrial existence began in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914 and ended in 1993. Sun Ran was a jazz musician who combined a sense of vangaurdism and tradition in equal measures, reveling in the pageantry and buoyancy of 1920s big-bands like Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington, while forging new paths by introducing synthesizers and open improvisation into jazz. His legendary ensemble, the Arkestra – alternately dubbed the Myth-Science Arkestra and the Omniverse Jet Set Arkestra amongst other descriptive monikers – was his vehicle into musical space, formed in the early 1950s and still performing 21-years after his passing, now under the leadership of saxophonist Marshall Allen. Photo Elise Gallant
