The Guelph Jazz Festival last week (Sept 3 through 7), held in a mostly placid river-run university town about 60 miles west of Toronto, climaxed with a blast-off to other worlds fueled by the Sun Ra Arkestra (led by saxophonist Marshall Allen) and Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie dance troupe. Photographer Lauren Deutsch captured the ecstasy of concert-goers joining musicians and movers onstage, more eager than Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters of the Third Kind to clamber aboard the aliens’ spaceship.
Saxophonist Marshall Allen led the Sun Ra Arkestra at the Guelph Jazz Festival, collaborating with Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie dancers. Photo (c) Lauren Deutsch
Panorama of Sun Ra Arkestra with Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie and audience at Guelph Jazz Festival. Photo (c) Lauren Deutsch
Audience members rushed onstage at urging of the Sun Ra Arkestra and Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie dance troupe, at the Guelph Jazz Festival — even those still in seats traveled the spaceways. Photo (c) Lauren Deutsch
Attendees at that penultimate concert (it was followed by a intensely propulsive performance by master drummer Milford Graves with tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan and pianist DD Jackson) had been prepared. The 100th anniversary year of Sun Ra’s arrival on Earth (May 24, 1914; his parents called him Herman Blount) occasioned keynote speeches, scholarly presentations and a panel of journalists (including yours truly) at the Guelph Jazz Colloquium. There was much interesting if sometimes esoteric discussion of ideas and speculations inspired at least in part by Ra, the visionary and prophetic composer/arranger/keyboardist/conceptualist/pamphleteer who experienced his own lift off May 30, 1993. I’m compelled to include this ancient video clip of Sun Ra in Sardinia and at the pyramids:
I’ll have a fuller review of the Festival and Colloquium in an upcoming edition of The Wire — but admit here and now that I abandoned conventions of journalistic objectivity when I was called by a dancer to take to the aisles, buzzing to a jaunty Ra riff. And I feel all the better for that.
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The Arkestra is still a wonderful unit and Marshall Allen is amazing. His continuity is what has ensured that it remains fresh and creative, rather than fading into exercises of nostalgia like ghost bands of other great orchestra. But what will happen after Marshall? And Howard, I hope we get a Youtube of you doing your space dance with the Arkestra
Thanks for your interest David. i agree Marshall Allen is an international — no, make that intergalactic — treasure. But I didn’t shoot myself, so don’t know about that youtube video.