VIA PRESS RELEASE | Resonance Records proudly presents Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank, a blazing set of previously unissued 1978 concert recordings by Sun Ra and his Myth Science Cosmo Swing Arkestra, as a limited two-LP set for RSD Black Friday, November 29. Co-produced by Zev Feldman and Sun Ra archivist Michael D. Anderson (who also played drums on the ’78 concert), the newly unearthed live session is an exciting successor to Sun Ra at the Showcase: Live in Chicago, another archival find that Feldman issued on his Jazz Detective imprint for Record Store Day this April. The new collection will also be released as a two-CD set on December 6.
Prophetic avant gardist Sun Ra’s big band is heard in blistering form—playing repertoire ranging from space-age jazz to interpretations of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and jazz standards by Fletcher Henderson, Miles Davis, and Tadd Dameron—on a dynamic 12-track set recorded at a show mounted by the Left Bank Jazz Society at the Famous Ballroom in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 23, 1978. Those recordings are augmented by two tracks captured at the concert and featured in the classic 1980 film Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise by the acclaimed music filmmaker Robert Mugge, who also provided images for the new package.
The deluxe Resonance packages include an essay by noted jazz critic J.D. Considine (who attended the ’78 show); reminiscences from Anderson, Mugge, Left Bank member John Fowler, critic Dan Morgenstern, and Arkestra veteran and latter-day bandleader Marshall Allen; and thoughts on Sun Ra’s artistry from musicians Gary Bartz and Craig Taborn.
Feldman says of this newest discovery, “It was very exciting to learn from Sun Ra archivist Michael D. Anderson that these recordings from the Left Bank in 1978 even existed. Filmmaker Robert Mugge was also very kind to us by allowing us to borrow the music he had recorded for his film, which is presented here as bonus tracks. Also thanks to Mr. Mugge, we’ve included various high-resolution screen captures from his film that help capture the energy of what it was like to be there at the Famous Ballroom that night.”
Anderson recalls, “When we played in the Famous Ballroom, it was incredible, being able to be in such a big place….Especially [with] the [Arkestra] dancers. They were one part of the band that a lot of people miss because the dancers are just like instruments, but you have to see it. That’s why when Mugge did this film—he was able to show the beauty of how they danced to the music.”
Mugge—whose shoot at the Left Bank show was his maiden voyage as a music documentarian—remembers, “[It] went surprisingly well, our only unresolved question being, could we successfully record a large ensemble without multitrack recording equipment, or even the cables we needed to patch into the mixing board of Vernon L. Welsh’s house PA system? But sound man Bruce Litecky improvised, coming up with usable audio by pointing one mike at the house PA speakers and another at whichever musician or vocalist was currently taking the lead.”
Considine notes in his overview that the music at the ’78 concert reached both veteran Sun Ra fans and new, younger listeners: “For the older, regular attendees, there was much of what they had gotten before. Sun Ra’s arrangement of the Tadd Dameron chestnut, ‘Lady Bird,’ was a condensed history of mid-century jazz….And for the younger, rock-raised newbies, there was the sonic splatter of Sun Ra’s synthesizer against Dale Williams’s probing electric guitar in the aptly titled ‘Thunder of Drums.’ There were African rhythms mixed with avant-garde improvisation, slapped electric bass driving classic swing cadences, and unabashed sentiment cheek-by-jowl against transcendental consciousness.”
The Left Bank’s Fowler remembers, “Sun Ra was a completely unique experience. And it was just a fun day. I mean, this was when he had all of the singers and the drummers and the dancers. There had to be 30 guys in the group. It was a real theatrical experience and a musical experience. Sun Ra was like nobody else.”
Weighing Sun Ra’s impact on jazz, saxophonist Bartz says, “Sunny confirmed that we need to be free as musicians. You can’t get hung up into a genre or a style. If you study music, you study sounds and if you do, like any other study, are you just going to study one kind of a sound? Or are you going to study sounds, period. I don’t study one kind of a music. I study music. I got that from Sunny.”
Pianist Taborn adds, “So many people revere him now. His approach was so comprehensive to the Black music experience as a whole. He delivered a commentary on so much of what had happened before and what was going to be happening that it applies itself across time. That’s why I think his music has so much traction now 30 years after he passed.”
Saxophonist and flautist Allen, who marked 66 years as a member of the Arkestra on his 100th birthday on May 25, reflects on Sun Ra’s trailblazing methods as a bandleader: “When Sunny was playing, he’d play four bars, and if you didn’t have the music, he’d switch it, he’d play another song, so you had to remember all this music. And then, when he played four bars, I’d come in. If I didn’t, he’d switch the number, and by the time you found that number, he’d be in another one. Above all, you had to be sincere to do what he wanted you to do.”
Resonance Records is a multi-GRAMMY® Award-winning label (most recently for John Coltrane’s Offering: Live at Temple University for “Best Album Notes”) that prides itself in creating beautifully designed, informative packaging to accompany previously unreleased recordings by the jazz icons who grace Resonance’s catalog. Headquartered in Beverly Hills, CA, Resonance Records is a division of Rising Jazz Stars, Inc. a California 501(c) (3) non-profit corporation created to discover the next jazz stars and advance the cause of jazz. Current Resonance Artists include Tawanda, Eddie Daniels, Tamir Hendelman, Christian Howes, and Donald Vega.
