Doors open: 19:00
Film screening: 19:30 Screening of Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut by Ari Benjamin Meyers
Concert: 20.00: Sun Ra Arkestra live
The Sun Ra Arkestra is a vital and long-lived institution in jazz history. The legendary ensemble was founded in Chicago in the mid-1950s by Sun Ra – composer, keyboardist and frequently hailed as a father of Afro-futurism. Claiming to come from the planet Saturn, Sun Ra built a mythology around his avant garde jazz that linked cosmic visions with the Civil Rights movement. He would have celebrated his 110th birthday this year.
Sun Ra’s musical spirit and intergalactic perspective live on in the Arkestra, now led by 100-year-old saxophonist Marshall Allen. Allen no longer travels outside the US, but this evening we will meet him in the new film Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut.
Made by Berlin-based artist and composer Ari Benjamin Meyers, the work follows Allen after being invited to respond to two original scores composed by Meyers himself. Through music, Allen engages in an intimate conversation about spontaneity, collaboration and the rigors of rehearsing. We meet Allen in his Philadelphia residence – the Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra, which has been at once the band’s home, its rehearsal hall, and the frontier of musical exploration, for over five decades. Merging the documentary with the speculative genre, the film teleports Allen onto a stage, and we witness him playing an evocative composition with his Electronic Valve Instrument (EVI) against the dome of Philadelphia’s historic Fels Planetarium. There, spectacular nebulas and symbols of his life come one after the other before he disappears into the darkness and becomes a constellation.
Telling a musical and visual story of transformation from the earthly to the otherworldly, the work transcends temporalities and places and pays homage both to Allen’s century-long life lived through music and to Sun Ra’s revolutionary musical vision and political utopia.
The spirit of Sun Ra is alive and well in the present-day manifestation of the Sun Ra Arkestra. They perform a mix of classic Sun Ra compositions and arrangements alongside Marshall Allen's own compositions and arrangements that are deeply rooted in the questing spirit of Sun Ra.
Sun Ra Arkestra:
Tara Middleton – vocals
Knoel Scott – alto & baritone sax, congas
Anthony Nelson – clarinet, baritone sax
James Stewart – flute, tenor sax
Chris Hemingway – alto sax
Michael Ray – trumpet,
Cecil Brooks – trumpet
Robert Stringer – trombone
Farid Barron – piano, keyboards
Tyler Mitchell – bass
George Gray – drums
Elson Nascimento – surdo, percussion
Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut, 2024
Artist: Ari Benjamin Meyers
Single channel 4K HD video projection (color, stereo sound)
Duration: 17:42 min
Commissioned and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film and co-produced by Fluentum for the exhibition Nebula 2024 on the occasion of the Biennale Arte Venezia 2024. Courtesy of the artist; Fondazione In Between Art Film; and Esther Schipper Berlin
This program is part of the Jazz at MUNCH series, presented in collaboration with Oslo Jazz Festival.
Photo: still from Ari Benjamin Meyers’ Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut, 2024 + Fabio Lugero
