Sun Ra - The Magic City
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Sun RaEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1993-11-25
Music Label: Evidence
Soundtracks:
- The Magic City
- The Shadow World
- Abstract Eye
- Abstract 'I'
Free Music Notes for The Magic City
Free Music Review: Not what I was expecting...
Hit: 3 Stars
.. because I wasn't expecting crap.
I am continually amazed and confounded by jazz music, and as my jazz education has progressed, I've had to rid myself of the notion that if I hear something I don't like by a given musician, I will never like anything by that musician. Likewise, I'm learning that just because I like something by someone doesn't mean I will like all their other stuff. Many jazz artists are continually reinventing themselves and trying new and different things, and apparently, that is what Sun Ra did on one or the other of two CD's I have, this one and Jazz in Silhouette. I say that because JIS is a study in big band, swing jazz. Very dynamic and interesting. And very different from this CD. TMC is a study in using the theramin (or something that sounds like one) to make noise, and it just about puts me in therapy. This CD has its moments, and make no mistake, this is intricate and intriguing...well...not music. Sound. Sonny and his musicians sound like they are experimenting, and the result is what you would expect: a lot of sonic data that requires the listener to analyze it. There is nothing resembling a melody or harmony here, nothing that could be written on a score, nothing that you would find yourself humming while doing the laundry or cutting the grass. Also, I've visited Birmingham AL ("The Magic City") many times and live only 90 miles from there, and I would protest that I have some idea of what a CD about the city might sound like. To me, Sun Ra's version just isn't it. I suppose the silver lining to this dark cloud is that I bought Jazz in Silhouette before TMC. Had the order been reversed, there is a good chance I never would have gotten around to buying Jazz in Silhouette, one of my favorite jazz recordings of all time. So hard core Sun Ra fans, avant-garde fans, fans of the unique and unusual in explorations of sound, rhythm, and dynamics, come and get it. Jazz fanatics seeking music: please look elsewhere.
The Magic City Poster
By the mid-1960s, bandleader and composer Sun Ra was delving deeply into extended, improvisation-heavy suites like The Magic City. Reckoned to be a tribute to his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, this long, circuitous piece comes in two different takes on the CD reissue, and both takes are rambunctiously keeled on Ra's core band members, tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who each offer scouring, ear-pinning interludes. Even so, the music here is huge, with sprawling collective improvisatons that burst with wholehearted high energy, suggesting a latent power that Sun Ra often channeled through both his own intricate scores and reams of cover tunes elsewhere in his several decades as jazz's chief outer-space renegade. --Andrew BartlettJazz Music CDs
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