Sun Ra - NOLA Playground 5-5-89 (video)

I hope you enjoy this a trio of video clips of Sun Ra and the Arkestra from 05-05-89 at
Couvent Elementary School in New Orleans.

According to Campbell/Trent, there is a 45 minute audience video of this performance.  Anyone care to share?

Heigh Ho

Whistle While You Work

Space Is The Place

New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 1989

615. [409]  Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Arkestra

Sun Ra (ep, voc); Michael Ray (tp, voc, acrobatics); Cecil Brooks (tp); Tyrone HIll (tb, voc); Marshall Allen (as, cowbell, voc); Noël Scott (as, backflips, voc); unidentified (ts, perc); Carl LeBlanc (eg); Philip Watkins (b); Buster Smith (d); Elson Nascimento (surdo grande, perc); unidentified (bgo, perc).

On the playground,
Marie C. Couvent Elementary School,
New Orleans, LA, May 5, 1989

This concert is preserved on a 50-minute audience tape; it includes the entire opening improvisation but misses part of "Blue Lou" and all of the concluding space chants.  A 45-minute audience video runs from the end of the opening number through the end of the concert.  Date and location from Ralph Pleshar.  Tunes identified by ct.  Personnel identified from the video; the list given in the first edition was seriously incorrect.  Kenneth Ellzey says:  "Playing tenor was a musician I do not know, and he was the only one not in the red choir robes worn by the Arkestra at that time.  I assumed he was a local sitting in for John Gilmore, possibly even auditioning.

The May 5 concert was an impromptu satellite event for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (whose site at the fairgrounds was too muddy to use on that day).  On May 7 the Arkestra performed at the main festival site (Ellzey).  By that time, several regular band members who were absent on May 5 had rejoined the Arkestra.

from The Earthly Recordings 2nd ed.  Campbell/Trent

Thanks to I-) for posting info at the Saturn List!

HUGE Thanks to telekinetica for posting the vids on YouTube.

Here is part (45 min.) of a previous Arkestral performance at the Jazz and Heritage Festival on May 6, 1979.  Thanks to Nikos & BK for this Solar Flares (August 13th) offering:

 FLAC


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