Allen n. Hunt

Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Solar Research Arkestra - Helsinki 1971: The Complete Concert (2009) {2CD Set Transparency 0314}
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© 1971, 2009 Transparency | 0314
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Experimental Big Band / Progressive Jazz

The complete document of a rare Finnish performance by the Sun Ra Arkestra – material recorded in Helsinki on October 14, 1971 – presented here in a 2CD package. The CDs feature both the first and second sets of the evening – and the material was recorded by the Finnish broadcasting company, so the quality is pretty good – well-recorded, and with as much clarity as some of the better-known live Arkestra albums of the time. The group's in wonderful form – a fairly large lineup, given the Scandinavian trip – and they run through modes that are spacey, spiritual, and straight. Players include Kwame Hadi, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, James Jacson, Pat Patrick, Danny Davis, and Danny Ray Thompson – and June Tyson sings some really wonderful vocals on the record too.

Between 1980 and 1998 Simon Rattle conducted no less than 934 concerts with the CBSO. Together they performed works by many 20th-century composers, as well as established favourites, and gave a total of 16 world premieres. Rattle also made 69 recordings for EMI with the orchestra. This box brings together that recorded legacy, which includes pieces by composers pivotal to his work, such as Mahler, Sibelius and Szymanowski, as well as some of the new compositions he championed — Nicholas Maw’s Odyssy, Mark Anthony Turnage’s Momentum, Three Screaming Popes and Drowned Out, and Thomas Ades Asyla.

Chuck Mangione, the famed flugelhornist and trumpeter fills his first recording of the 21st century with some wonderfully subdued love songs whose subtle, intimate qualities may surprise those of his fans who best know his boisterous pop hits. More than simply expressing a romantic boy-girl kind of love, Mangione is playing gentle, atmospheric jazz for a wide variety of special people, real and animated. And there is no doubt that the truest love here is that between the artist and some of his old bandmates.

These two discs from Sun Ra and his Solar Myth Arkestra are not, as their title suggests, parts of a singular or continuous work. They were initially issued as two separate titles – similar to the two-part Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra – by the Belgian BYG Actuel label in 1971. Both volumes consist of mid-fidelity and primarily self-realized and -produced recordings. Despite the claim that these sides were taped in New York City at Sun Studios, Ra discographer Robert L. Campbell notes that by the time these tracks were documented, the Arkestra had ended its N.Y.C. residency and returned to Philadelphia.

War got decent mileage from the soundtrack for this B-movie, which premiered near the end of the first blaxploitation era. They ended with two R&B hits, and while they were perturbed that United Artists, the label they had left, reaped the benefits, it at least kept them active and in the R&B hunt.