Arts for Art, producer of the international Vision Festival, celebrate their 25th year with a double feature of AfroFuturist / FreeJazz icons the Sun Ra Arkestra and William Parker’s Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield.
The Sun Ra Arkestra retains its place at the outer limits of our imagination with over 60 years of eclectic, outrageous, mystifying music and performance imbued with a powerful jazz consciousness. This intergalactic phenomena and precedent for AfroFuturism will be witnessed in its full glory of sound and movement, accompanied by live video painting by artist William Mazza.
Marshall Allen, alto saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, and arranger, continues to pursue and spread the vision of the enigmatic Sun Ra. Allen began working with Sun Ra in 1958 and assumed the helm of the Sun Ra Arkestra after the Sun Ra’s ascension in 1993, and John Gilmore’s in 1995. At age 95, Allen continues to compose and arrange for the Arkestra and, much like his mentor, is totally committed to a life of discipline centered on the study, research, and further development of Sun Ra's musical precepts.
Sun Ra was the first to pursue full-scale collective improvisation in a big band setting, one of the first jazz musicians to perform and record on electronic instruments, and his preoccupation with space travel as a compositional subject pre-dated bands like Weather Report and Earth Wind and Fire by about 15 years. All from someone refusing to cite Earth as his home planet having arrived here from Saturn. As Sun Ra once explained, “I never wanted to be a part of planet Earth, but I am compelled to be here, so anything I do for this planet is because the Master-Creator of the Universe is making me do it. I am of another dimension. I am on this planet because people need me.”
In the year, 2000, bassist-composer-bandleader William Parker created a band that extends both the text and music of the immortal songbook of Curtis Mayfield. For over a decade the core ensemble – featuring musicians well-versed in a broad range of jazz, R&B, and soul music – showcased the beloved singer Leena Conquest and the legendary activist-poet Amiri Baraka. It became a top draw at jazz festivals throughout Europe, at the Chicago Jazz Festival, and at AFA’s essential Vision Festival. This will be the ensemble’s first performance since the passing of Amiri Baraka in 2014, and features Thomas Sayers Ellis performing Baraka’s words as well as his own. An impressionistic visual experience will be created by the video art of Moon Lasso based on the poetic lyrics of Curtis Mayfield and William Parker.
Bassist/composer William Parker is among the most active and highly regarded musicians performing today. The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield was the first project in his illustrious career devoted to the music of another composer, prophet, preacher, revolutionary, humanist, and griot Curtis Mayfield. All are descriptors for William Parker as well. This project locates Curtis Mayfield's and Parker’s positive messages of hope and fortitude in the present moment where these energies remain in great need.
According to E.E. Bradman of BassPlayer magazine, “William Parker is the Philosopher-King of New York’s improvised music scene, a gentle but towering godfather renowned for his work with everyone from Fred Anderson to John Zorn. ... And though he’s closely tied to free jazz and avant-jazz, Parker’s playing—more soulful, melodic, grounded, and playful than those genres might suggest—organically and deftly sidesteps narrow stylistic categories.”
And according to Evan Haga writing for Jazz Times, “This is an artist who seems to offer up multi-disc box sets more frequently than others put out albums, and whose Sessionography, helmed by Rick Lopez and released in 2014, runs nearly 500 pages. Within these leader recordings and collaborations is a staggering range of creative situations—from solo recitals to duos to small-group free improvisation, era-defining working bands and sprawling thematic projects for large ensemble and voices.”