The Bleeding Edge: 7/28/2025

One might say that this week on the Bleeding Edge will be both modest and busy. The only events within the San Francisco city limits will be taking place on Thursday, July 31; but there will be three of them! They are likely to overlap, but also likely is that each will appeal to different tastes. Start times and venues are as follows:

6 p.m., San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch: Unless my archives are mistaken, the last encounter with the Del Sol String Quartet was when the visited they San Francisco Conservatory of Music this past March. I found it more than a little perplexing that BayImproviser did not take the trouble to identify the individual members of this ensemble: violinists Benjamin Kreith and Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Charlton Lee on viola, and cellist Kathryn Bates. They will contribute to an event called Everybody’s Climate 2025 with a full-length performance of The Jingwei Bird. The program will consist entirely of new works by Asian-American composers with settings of bilingual poetry contributed by Genny Lim. For those that do not already know, the venue is located in the Civic Center at 100 Larkin Street; and, because this is a library, there will be no charge for admission!

Saxophonist JustKing Jones (from the BayImproviser Web page for his visit to San Francisco)

7 p.m., Black Cat Jazz Supper Club: Saxophonist JustKing Jones will lead a quartet, whose other members will be pianist Jordan Williams, Jason Clotter on bass, and drummer Malcom Charles. He has just returned from his GENESIS Tour of Europe, which took him to Paris, Dublin, London, and Newcastle. His style is based in modern jazz with both gospel and Caribbean influences. This evening will be the first of a three-night residency. The Black Cat Supper Club is located in the Tenderloin at 400 Eddy Street.

7:30 p.m., SF JAZZ Center: This will also be the beginning of residency, this time lasting four nights through Sunday. The Sun Ra Arkestra will present a program entitled (true to the spirit of its founder) We Travel the Spaceways. For those unfamiliar with Ra, that spirit blends big band swing with his spirit of “cosmic jazz” and “Afro-futurist pageantry.” Each night will present a different set, all led by saxophonist Knoel Scott. Those that like to “sit still and listen” to their jazz should be informed that, on the positive side, there will be a different set each night; but all four performances will be open dance-floor events! The Center is located at 201 Franklin Street on the northwest corner of Fell Street.

Kronos to Present Tenth Festival in Two Weeks

The annual music festival presented by the Kronos Quartet will begin much earlier than it did last year. Leader David Harrington on first violin and cellist Paul Wiancko will by joined by two new members, Gabriela Díaz on second violin and violist Ayane Kozasa. This will be the first Festival to take place under the leadership of Ann-Marie Daniels, the new Managing Director of the Kronos Performing Arts Association.

Poster design for this year’s festival

Once again, there will be three concert performances taking place at the SFJAZZ Center. The title for this season will be Good Medicine, and the programs will include five world premieres. There will also be arrangements by Jacob Garchik of Nina Simone’s delivery of the song “For All We Know” by J. Fred Coots and Sun Ra’s “Outer Spaceways, Inc.” The recitals will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 25, and Saturday, April 26, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 27. In addition, during the Festival Ellen Reid’s free SOUNDWALK installation will return to Golden Gate Park.

Ticketing will again be handled by the SFJAZZ Center on a performance-by-performance basis. There will be reserved seating for all three of the evening concerts with prices ranging from $20 to $65. Tickets may also be purchased by calling 866-920-5299 or by visiting the Box Office on the ground floor of the SFJAZZ Center. The SFJAZZ Center is located at 201 Franklin Street, on the northwest corner of Fell Street.

Sun Ra’s Own “Satellite” from 1978

Some readers may recall my delight towards the end of last month when IN+OUT Records released Lights On A Satellite. That album marked the 100th birthday of Marshall Allen, who took over leading Sun Ra’s band after his death. What I did not know at that time was that the title of this album was the same as another album that Ra himself had recorded in 1978. That album will be available on CD when it is released at the end of this week on Friday, December 6, under the full title Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank. As readers have probably come to expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for the two-CD release.

In many respects, this is a follow-up to Sun Ra at the Showcase: Live in Chicago, which was discussed on this site this past May. Both of these albums were produced by Zev Feldman. His co-producer was again Michael D. Anderson, who is Ra’s archivist, as well as one of the five percussionists on the new Left Bank album. Allen performs on this album as one of the two alto saxophonists, also playing flute and piccolo. I have to say that I tend to prefer these “live” releases for the spontaneity of the performers (which is sometimes vocal, rather than instrumental).

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

Mind you, thanks to my own experiences, I am fully aware that even the best recording techniques will not capture the rich visual qualities of “being there” in the audience. Indeed, as can be only mildly suggested by the above cover photograph, Ra’s very appearance contributed to those visual qualities. Nevertheless, one can still appreciate the games that Ra could play with such “treasured standards” as “Cocktails for Two” (where I suspect that Allen was the saxophonist who went over the top with his improvisations) and Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight.” (Mind you, as I quickly learned from my visits to the Village Vanguard, Monk had his own repertoire of games to play!)

Personally, I cannot be more pleased that this year endowed me with the generous supply of reminders of how much I enjoyed my past encounters with Ra through performances and recordings.

Marshall Allen Celebrates Sun Ra

This seems to be a good year for reviving my interest in Sun Ra. At the beginning of this past May, I wrote about the release of Sun Ra at the Showcase: Live in Chicago, which accounted for performances in both February of 1976 and November of 1977. Listening to that album reminded me of when my wife and I were living in Los Angeles and went to at least one of Ra’s performances with his Arkestra.

Cover of the album begin discussed (from the Amazon.com Web page)

Ra died on May 30, 1993. After that, Marshall Allen took over leading the band, which kept Ra’s name in the title as the Sun Ra Arkestra. This past May 25 marked Allen’s 100th birthday. For that occasion IN+OUT Records invited the 24 musicians in this band to make a recording in its studio. The result was released today under the title Lights On A Satellite, and it is now available through an Amazon.com Web page.

I have to confess that there were a few episodes during my listening experience that shifted my attention in a somewhat unorthodox direction. This was particularly the case with the ensemble’s take on David Rose’s “Holiday for Strings.” This was the theme song for The Red Skelton Show, which was always introduced by a chorus singing “David Rose and his ORRRRchestra” (which was about as inspiring as fingernails on a blackboard)! Spike Jones also had his way with the tune, having it sung by a clucking chicken. Allen introduces the tune on Lights On A Satellite with a bit of his own tongue in cheek; and, while his rhetoric verges on the raucous, he never descends into the absurdities of the last century! (Mind you, the gong at the end of “Friendly Galaxy” also brings Jones to mind!)

Sun Ra: Chicago Sets from 1976 and 1977

Sun Ra on the cover of the album being discussed

In reviewing my archives, I discovered that, on several occasions, I would conjecture the influence of Sun Ra on a particular jazz artist that was the subject of my article. Sadly, it seems that I have not yet written anything about Ra himself. Fortunately, he was one of the artists to benefit from the plethora of new albums released in celebration of Record Store Day last month. The full title of the album that can introduce listeners to Ra’s unique approach to performance is Sun Ra at the Showcase: Live in Chicago. The Amazon.com Web page in that preceding hyperlink provides options for both MP3 and a two-CD set.

All of the selections on the second CD were recorded on February 21, 1976. This includes the longest of the tracks, “The Shadow World,” clocking in short of eighteen minutes in duration. The tracks on the first CD were recorded at two different performances on November 4 and 10, 1977. The ensemble for all of these performances was a large one, and all of the reed players alternate among different instruments. That includes oboist James Jackson, whose other instrument is the Ancient Ihnfinity Drum. The brass section is limited to three trumpeters (Ahmed Abdullah, Emmett McDonald, and Vincent Chancey), joined by Richard Williams on French horn. There are also three vocalists: June Tyson, Cheryl Banks-Smith, and Wisteria (Judith Holton).

I had the good fortune to see Ra at least once in performance during the time when my wife and I were living in Los Angeles. It was clear that the visual experience was as important as the musical one, particularly to the extent that performances took place in a broader context of ritual. Nevertheless, the music was still jazz, even if the improvisations were wilder than anything one might encounter from any other ensemble.

Now, of course, those improvisations can be experienced only through recordings. Nevertheless, there are some advantages to that limitation, particularly for those listening with gear that includes access to time codes. It would not be out of the question to “parse” any given track for the sake of homing focus in on an extended solo or trying to tease out just how many instruments are doing how many different things during an ensemble episode. (Also, it may take several listenings to figure out some of the words being sung!)

I realize that some of these observations may be contrary to Ra’s own inclinations. Extended improvisations tend to develop around relatively simple building blocks, suggesting that the attentive listener should simply take things as they come to pass. While I had no trouble grooving on such spontaneity when in the presence of Ra and his ensemble, at the present “historical distance,” I am more inclined to take “deeper dives,” not necessarily for the entire album but at least for specific episodes that I feel deserve more attention.

Nevertheless, those without background experiences may have some trouble deciding whether this is noise masquerading as music or music masquerading as noise. My guess is that, if anyone would have put that choice to Ra himself, his answer would have been “Both and neither!” I suppose the appropriate metaphor is that Ra rolls the dice, and it is up to the listener to play it as it lays.

Jazzy Stockhausen

I suppose I should feel some modicum of satisfaction in having one of my conjectures confirmed by the Telegraph obituary for Karlheinz Stockhausen. The conjecture was that "the lion's share on the music from Licht [Stockhausen's cycle of seven operas, one for each day of the week] now available on recordings seems to have been inspired by performances by jazz greats such as Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, and Jimmy Knepper." The confirmation comes from this item from his early biography:

Between 1944 and 1947 Stockhausen paid for his education by working as a stretcher-bearer in a military hospital, as a farmhand, assistant to a travelling magician and as a jazz pianist in clubs.

Now this does not say anything about how good a jazz pianist Stockhausen was or even where those clubs were and whether or not they were ever visited by American performers. Nevertheless, it still means that Stockhausen had at least some experience in the practice of jazz. On this one dimension Stockhausen stands a cut above Igor Stravinsky, who kept trying to write "jazzy" dance pieces but could never really "get it." If I have a personal fantasy about Stockhausen having a collection of old Blue Note vinyls, then my fantasy about Stravinsky has him sitting in the Hot Club de France in Paris listening to Stéphane Grappelli, gnashing his teeth in envy because he could never figure out how to write music that sounded that way! I suspect that a lot of that Licht music sounds jazzy because Stockhausen still had a sense for how to play jazz, rather than just listen to it. Furthermore, Stockhausen was playing his jazz at a time when jazz was going through what was (for me at least) its most important revolution, the rise of the likes of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Lennie Tristano. The "jazz greats" I had previously cited would not be as memorable as they are today without standing on the shoulders of those giants from the Forties, that same period when Stockhausen was trying his hand at jazz piano. Did the jazz revolution fuel his own revolutionary spirit? There may never be a definitive answer to that question, but I can still fantasize about it!

From that point of view, I need to take issue with Ivan Hewett's appreciation piece, also in the Telegraph, which argues that most of Stockhausen's greatness lay in compositions from the Fifties and Sixties and that "vast tracts" of Licht are "cringe-making." I have no idea if Hewett experienced any of the Licht operas as theater; but, if he was writing about them as if they were "pure music," continuing Stockhausen's experiments in the grammar of how scores could be developed, then he was laboring under a great misconception. If jazz really is integral to how we should approach Licht, then we need to think of it more as performance (which happens to be staged, perhaps in the same spirit that Sun Ra performances were stages) than as composition. This move from the grammar of composition to the rhetoric of performance may, indeed, have been the act of a musician in his twilight years looking back on his origins; and, at my age at least, that is not cause for cringing!

Actually, I found Hewett's way with words more cringe-making than anything Stockhausen ever produced. What are we to make of Hewett's phrase, "the great Austrian/Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg?" Is he trying to connote that Schoenberg's music could not have been what it was had Schoenberg not been Jewish? If so, then I suspect I would not be the only one to disagree with him vigorously!

In this respect I found the BBC approach to the news of Stockhausen's death (my initial source) to be far more interesting. Newshour approached Brian Eno for comment. Eno began by comparing him to John Cage, which I felt was a great way to start. He emphasized this connection by observing that Stockhausen should be assessed not only by his own work but by the work of those he influenced, stressing that, in Stockhausen's case, much of that influence when into the revolution on the pop music scene (Eno being one of those influenced). I think this is more important than anything Hewett said in his appreciation, which chose, instead, to invoke the cult-like nature of those who followed Stockhausen.

Finally, I am glad to hear that Licht was completed before Stockhausen died. The recordings for two of the operas (for Wednesday and Sunday) have not yet been released, possibly because they have not yet been performed. I have every reason to hope that they will be performed, and I look forward to adding those recordings to my collection.