Sample Members of Herbie Hancock’s Sextet & Sun Ra Arkestra

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Sample Members of Herbie Hancock’s Sextet & Sun Ra Arkestra

The album 'Silver' by Swedish-Turkish saxophone player Ilhan Ersahin is a glimpse of his career captured on one record. The stellar line-up features jazz icons he's played with in the past, as well as an legendary Sun Ra affiliate who he hosted in the Nublu jazz club in New York’s Lower East Side he owned from 2002 onwards.

By

Tracklib

·

March 17, 2022

The late legendary contrabass player Juini Booth started working with jazz icon, Afrofuturist, and outer space explorer Sun Ra in 1967, and became one of his Arkestra’s longest-serving members. Lucky him, because the story goes that if Sun Ra didn’t like someone’s performance during their concerts, he didn’t confront the musician. Instead, he skipped town with the rest of the Arkestra, leaving the musician stranded in whatever city they performed.

juini booth sun ra

Jazz trumpet player Eddie Henderson, on his turn, was part of Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi-era sextet. Mwandishi was Hancock’s ninth studio album, and the first release leaving behind the jazz idiom to carve out a new original sound in funk, jazz fusion and ventures into electronic music and the early use of synthesizers, as two years later also famously expressed on Head Hunters. Herbie Hancock is only one of the many musicians Henderson played with from that era onwards, including Norman ConnorsGary BartzArchie SheppMcCoy Tyner, and Ilhan Ersahin’s trip-hop moniker, Wax Poetic.

"Their capability to unearth deep musical truths stems from decades of sharing stages and bandstands with mythical giants of America's true native art form."

The third musician Ilhan Ersahin enlisted for Silver: Kenny Wollesen, the New York drummer that has recorded and toured with a who's who of artists (from Tom Waits to Norah Jones to genre-defying musician John Zorn), and who is all over records in New York’s vibrant Downtown scene.

Their collective outcome: Silver, with Ilhan Ersahin himself on the tenor saxophone and Rhodes. According to the album description, “Silver emphasizes on mood and tone. The ‘bite-sized’ approach of this ensemble translates as a string of 5-minute individual pieces. Their capability to unearth deep musical truths stems from decades of sharing stages and bandstands with mythical giants of America's true native art form.”

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