Bandleader Knoell Scott leads the Sun Ra Arkestra, performing at SFJazz on July 31, 2025. Photo by Frankie Solinsky Duryea. The Sun Ra Arkestra began the first of four San Francisco shows at SFJazz’s ...

Without the jazz musician, poet, and bandleader Sun Ra, the music industry would look and sound somewhat different. Countless mainstream artists have been inspired by his boundlessness and his ability ...

From swing to bebop to free jazz, Sun Ra bridged myriad musical styles to create a singular avant-garde sound, and with his ever-evolving collective, the Sun Ra Arkestra, he pushed the boundaries of ...

He is a miracle of the highest order, a grand eccentric, and true genius of the cosmos. A peerless 20th century composer, a poet, a brilliant pianist, a live performance visionary, one of the greatest ...

As befits a being whose life encompassed much of the Solar System, from his origins on Saturn to his long earthly sojourn that ended in 1993, Sun Ra composed, played and recorded an astronomical ...

PBS will soon highlight a pioneering musician whose band is still based in a Germantown rowhome. Sun Ra, the late bandleader of the Sun Ra Arkestra, is the subject of an episode of "American Masters" ...

Director Christine Turner introduces the subject of “Sun Ra: Do the Impossible” with what might be called tactical piano: The performer is seen playing something that suggests Debussy, then segues ...

Over the decades, music venues in San Francisco have come and gone, but one constant remains: Great American Music Hall. A house of ill repute when it first opened in 1907, the building has gone ...

In pre- and inter-performance comments, a plea pervaded pianist Sullivan Fortner’s Friday show at the University of Chicago: Can we be anywhere but here? Thank goodness Sun Ra and his music mastered ...

Discover the extraordinary life of poet, philosopher and music visionary Sun Ra. With his ever-evolving collective, the Sun Ra Arkestra, he self-produced more than 200 albums, stretching the ...

Randy Porter has been teaching music in the Oakland Unified School District for 40 years, but he never set out to become a music teacher. When he was younger, he had his sights set on a professional ...