Sun Ra Arkestra - Lights on a Satellite (2024)

As if from the farthest reaches of space, a tremendous positive energy has come to us via "Light on a Satellite": It is Sun Ra's music, played by his Arkestra, more than 30 years after the legendary band founder's earthly demise - or, in other words, after his reported ascent to Saturn. Under the direction of Marshall Allen, the NEA Jazz Master (2025) and multi-instrumentalist, who celebrated his 100th birthday on May 25, 2024, Sun Ra's big band has arrived safely in the 21st century, after traveling Sun Ra's space ways for almost 70 years. This album pays tribute to the lifetime achievement of Marshall Allen, who leads the Sun Ra Arkestra since 1993. Recorded in Studio A at New York's Power Station on June 16, 2024, the album celebrates the mastery of the exceptional musician Marshall Allen as a multi-instrumentalist, arranger, bandleader, teacher, and guardian of Sun Ra's unique legacy.

Perhaps this day will one day become part of the collective jazz memory, for what we are experiencing here is a simultaneity of the non-simultaneous, projected into the future, a time machine traveling through 100 years of jazz, out of the free approach of the Sun Ra Arkestra and in its signature groove right into the heart of swing - with a century-old jazz master as captain. That in itself is a superlative. We are even more inspired by the power with which the virtuoso Marshall Allen continues his life's vocation.

As a tribute to the life's work of Marshall Allen, IN+OUT Records invited the Sun Ra Arkestra into the studio with 24 musicians in the largest possible line-up, with the goal of documenting the music in its polyphony and expansion in space and time in the best possible way. It is not only the variety of instruments used, but also the fact that musicians from four generations come together with a repertoire that spans 100 years of jazz history.

TRACKLIST

01. Sun Ra Arkestra - Lights on a Satellite
02. Sun Ra Arkestra - Dorothy's Dance
03. Sun Ra Arkestra - Big John's Special
04. Sun Ra Arkestra - Images
05. Sun Ra Arkestra - Friendly Galaxy
06. Sun Ra Arkestra - Baby Won't You Please Be Mine
07. Sun Ra Arkestra - Holiday for Strings
08. Sun Ra Arkestra - Tapestry from an Asteroid
09. Sun Ra Arkestra - Reflects Motion
10. Sun Ra Arkestra - Joy Delight
11. Sun Ra Arkestra - Way Down Yonder in New Orleans