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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Guelph’s jazz fest/colloquium of cosmic improvisation, Deutsch pix

September 11, 2014 by Howard Mandel

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.

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Saxophonist Marshall Allen led the Sun Ra Arkestra at the Guelph Jazz Festival, collaborating with Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie dancers. Photo (c) Lauren Deutsch

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Panorama of Sun Ra Arkestra with Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie and audience at Guelph Jazz Festival. Photo (c) Lauren Deutsch

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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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  1. David Sampson says

    September 11, 2014 at 10:34 pm

    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

    • Howard Mandel says

      September 11, 2014 at 11:01 pm

      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.

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

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What if there's more to jazz than you suppose? What if jazz demolishes suppositions and breaks all bounds? What if jazz - and the jazz beyond, behind, under and around jazz - could enrich your life? What if jazz is the subtle, insightful, stylish, … [Read More...]

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