[PHC1]

Originally Posted by Antonmb

Like Coltrane, his disciple Pharoah Sanders could range freely at times. Scattered in amongst his meditative pieces are some wilder bits worthy of free jazz. And then of course there’s The Heliocentric Sounds of Sun Ra.

Tony, Sun Ra was perhaps in a league all of his own with his "cosmic" music and theatrical performances and pushing the boundaries of experimental.

I've never completely connected with Sun Ra myself but it is a fun listen from time to time.

I also wondered if he was the influence on the future of "space-music" which is a sub-genre of New Age music but that does not seem to be the case.



From Wikipedia

In 1928, the German composer Robert Beyer published a paper about "Raummusik" (spatial music),[38] which is an entirely different sense of the term. Karlheinz Stockhausen, who became a colleague of Beyer in Cologne in 1953, used the expression "space music" in this sense when describing his early development as a composer: "The first revolution occurred from 1952/53 as musique concrète, electronic tape music, and space music, entailing composition with transformers, generators, modulators, magnetophones, etc., the integration of all concrete and abstract (synthetic) possibilities within sound (also all noises) and the controlled projection of sound in space."[39] In the sense meant here, he stated in 1967, "Several have commented that my electronic music sounds 'like on a different star,' or 'like in outer space.' Many have said that when hearing this music, they have sensations as if flying at an infinitely high speed, and then again, as if immobile in an immense space."[40] A number of Stockhausen's later compositions (not all of them electronic music) take outer space as their theme: Sternklang (Star Sound, 1971), Ylem (1972), Sirius (1975–77), several components of the opera-cycle Licht (Weltraum (Outer Space, 1991–92/1994), Michaelion (1997), Komet (Comet, 1994/1999), Lichter—Wasser (Lights—Waters, 1998–99)), and the so-called "Urantia" subcycle of Klang (Sound, 2006–2007), extending from its thirteenth "hour", Cosmic Pulses to its twenty-first "hour" Paradies.

Music historian Joseph Lanza described the emerging light music style during the early 1950s as a precursor to modern space music. He wrote that orchestra conductor Mantovani used new studio technologies to "create sound tapestries with innumerable strings" and in particular, "the sustained hum of Mantovani's reverberated violins produced a sonic vaporizor foreshadowing the synthesizer harmonics of space music