SFJAZZ presents Sun Ra Arkestra
Robert M. Miner Auditorium
SFJAZZ Center, 205 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA 94102 USA
7:30 PM, Sunday, August 6, 2017
Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!
[7:35 PM lights down, announcements from Randall Kline, band out]
[9:01 PM lights down, band out]
The first set was appropriately wild, swinging from cracked egg crazy to utter chaos to delicate ballads and stride piano struttin'. Gotta let all the cats out of the bag, right? I might have properly identified two or three tunes out of the none of ten they played. That's good enough for a baseball hitting average, right? Hopefully I'll get a couple more once I set the Internet hive mind loose on my scrambled egg notes.
A Joyful Noise starts off with a nice cello solo, soon joined by the piano, and then erupting into full band chaos. Joyful indeed!
The fourth tune of the set sounded a lot like Autumn Leaves to me, but it didn't quite follow the melody line all the way the completion I expected from memory, suggesting that I'm mistaken in my identification.
Set two opened with a pretty cool solo from Kash Killion on some sort of African lute. From my vantage point, I was too far away to really get much of a look at the intstrument, but it sounded like some sort of ngoni. That tune eventually morphed into an unidentified tune that I assume is a Sun Ra original – with chanted lyrics of “I had forgotten I had to forget”, what else could it be?
I didn't see Ronnie Burrage leave the stage, but I'm pretty sure I spotted Knoel Scott's transition to the drum kit – my notes aren't clear about what happened then. Hopefully RB just needed a spell of rest.
At some point during the show, one of the band members mentioned that they'd played four nights without a repeat. That's awesome! I'd love to hear the other sets or see setlists… It's great to know that there are folks who believe in really mixing things up from night to night instead of just following a rote program of hits.
SFJAZZ posted an interesting promo article about the history of Sun Ra's music.
Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!