Sun Ra and His Arkestra
‘Lights On A Satellite: Live At The Left Bank’
Resonance Records

Sun Ra Arkestra Directed by Marshall Allen
‘Lights On A Satellite’
Resonance Records and IN+OUT Records

It’s well known that during the years of what is commonly regarded as Sun Ra’s mortal existence, between 1914 and 1993, the musician previously known as Herman “Sonny” Blount was essentially based on our planet. But, as he continually proclaimed to us, he also spent a great deal of his time traveling beyond the solar system and exploring the further reaches of the cosmos, alternate universes, and variant timelines as well.

Surely that can be the only scientific explanation why we are now seeing two new releases by Sun Ra that are both titled “Lights On A Satellite.” One of these was taped live at  Baltimore’s famous Left Bank in 1978; the other is a studio session that was recorded a few weeks after Marshall Allen, who has led the Arkestra for most of the 30-plus years since Ra transitioned into the next world, celebrated his 100th birthday.  

The releases are fairly spectacular; they are also both highly eclectic. Perhaps the influence of Woody Herman on Sun Ra’s music has been underappreciated, in that Herman too was a crucial jazz bandleader who liked to play a bit of everything, from the most ancient of blues to the latest in modern jazz. 

Both sets have no shortage of the raucous, free-form blowing that most casual listeners associate with Sun Ra. Yet both are also well-supplied with time-traveling, swinging antiques from jazz’s past — in fact, both “Satellite” albums include a version of the 1934 Fletcher Henderson classic “Big John Special.” 

There are also a few surprising samples of the Great American Songbook. In fact, two of the last tunes you would ever expect to hear being played by Sun Ra are “Cocktails for Two,” on the live album, and “Holiday for Strings,” on the studio date.

The new studio set represents Mr. Allen’s vision for the Arkestra; six of the package’s 10 tracks are credited to him. In addition to serving as a general bandleader, he has long been one of the Arkestra’s most distinctive voices on alto saxophone and other reeds. He also plays the EVI, a wind-driven electronic instrument that sounds kind of like a theremin on hallucinogens, giving the ensemble the requisite outer space sound.

The studio album utilizes a 24-piece edition of the Arkestra, including several singers and a string quartet. As when Tex Beneke and then Ray McKinley led the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the current Sun Ra ensemble is not strictly a ghost band; Mr. Allen not only plays the “greatest hits,” so to speak, but he has unearthed previously unknown Ra works, such as a driving, danceable piece titled “Joy Delight” and the 1954 “Baby Won’t You Please Be Mine.” 

The latter is a sensual soul ballad that one could easily imagine being sung by Dinah Washington; here it’s “sung” movingly by Knoel Scott on baritone sax and vocalist Tara Middleton.  

Mr. Allen has also refashioned older works from the band’s history, such as David Rose’s iconic instrumental “Holiday For Strings,” which now features an amiably goofy lyric written and sung by trumpeter Michael Ray, overdubbed as a one-man approximation of the Mills Brothers.  

The leader has also reanimated “Way Down Yonder In New Orleans,” an early jazz classic that is only two years older than Mr. Allen himself, with a vocal by the band plus guitarist Carl LeBlanc singing solo. It’s in a very bouncy two-beat, though I would hesitate to describe it as a Dixieland treatment. 

The material on the 1978 Baltimore set covers an even wider range of styles. The double-disc package opens with some of the expected far-out stuff, reminding us that Sun Ra was not only a harbinger of the avant-garde but an early adopter of electronic instruments in the music. There’s a lot of whirring and whining in the mix here, though it’s hard to tell if it’s Sun Ra’s keyboard or Mr. Allen’s EWI.  

There are also some stunning moments by the leader on traditional acoustic piano; “A Pleasant Place In Space” is an astral-style unaccompanied solo that incorporates echoes of Duke Ellington’s “A Single Petal of a Rose” and is similar in style to his famous solo piano recital at New York City’s Axis from the previous summer. 

From there, he gradually floats back to earth, landing in the deep south in the 1920s and diving into the kind of blues piano he — or Herman Blount, at least — would have heard growing up there. “Space Travelin’ Blues” starts with the pianist by himself, eventually joined by bassist Richard Williams and drummer Michael Anderson. The horns join in later and start riffing, and you can feel the full force of the whole house rocking.

It gets even more diverse: There’s a mashup of two early bebop classics, Tadd Dameron’s “Lady Bird” and Miles Davis’s “Half Nelson”; there are two proto-swing Fletcher Henderson masterpieces, “Big John’s Special” and “Yeah Man”; and there’s an 11-minute track with a heavy backbeat titled “Watusi,” which is, like, Afro-Futurism that you can dance to.

In many ways, the most surprising choices are the most satisfying. There are two songbook standards: He rumbles, pounds, and strides his way through “Over the Rainbow,” but then on Sam Coslow’s “Cocktails for Two” the leader demonstrates his ’30s-style piano piano chops, referencing Art Tatum and Fats Waller. Less than a chorus in, he’s joined by Mr. Allen on alto, himself recreating the sweet band saxophone style of that era, as in the Guy Lombardo reed section.  

Quickly enough, though, he takes it outside, and sounds just like, well, Marshall Allen.