Sun Ra Arkestra
Storm King Art Center
1 Museum Rd.
New Windsor, NY
August 15, 2026
Is it that Storm King is the perfect site for the Sun Ra Arkestra or is it that Arkestra is the perfect band for Storm King? Either way (I’m leaning towards the latter), this was a perfect summer concert. The Storm King Art Center, an open-air museum in upstate New York, is known for its vast acreage dotted with impressive, massive sculptures; it has perennial potential to feel like a mysterious edge-of-the-world place, as though you’d somehow made it to Mars, and no band could ever punctuate that thought quite like the Sun Ra Arkestra: like a living, breathing monument to the great works and compositions of the late Sun Ra, they make the most sense in this somewhat-alien context, far enough from the city lights that when the sun is down, starlight is visible. (Of course they also make plenty of sense in Philadelphia, the opposite edge of the world.)
The Arkestra took the stage, without the great Marshall Allen, the band’s 102-year-old elder statesman and bandleader – we were led in a brief chant of “Marshall Allen, aṣẹ, aṣẹ,” sending healing energy – and traipsed into song, with free, floating, circuitous, abstracted horns, woodwinds and strings and percussion acting like slow-emerging daybreak, the whole ensemble making a gentle, strange noise that settled after a few minutes into the soft groove of “Springtime Again.” The song eventually shifted into a full-bloom, stomping, swinging strut, with flute and synth tracing wild, kinetic, arcing lines – like an endless tower rising – as the song’s only words – “It’s spring / Springtime again,” sung with supple beauty by Tara Middleton (aka Jupiter Girl) and the night’s bandleader, Knoel Scott — grew increasingly jubilant.
The gathered crowd was colorful and full of sweet summer energy, and abundant with families; naturally, it was the kids who most early and eagerly filled the area in front of the stage, dancing and shaking their bodies unselfconsciously. (I kept thinking that these kids must have the coolest parents, not just because they wouldn’t be at this concert otherwise but also because they had crazy ramshackle DIY outfits, like this one little kid in leopard-print pants and a fuchsia-and-white-striped shirt. Style envy galore.) The Arkestra members were themselves of course decked out in their incredible, bright, brilliant, regal and futuristic garb, shining, sharp crowns and flowing gowns, fitting fits for their deeply alive, homemade, glorious transmogrification of jazz: sometimes they were playing and swinging so hard together in an ancient, traditional style, sometimes making such a great disorienting noise of On The Corner-esque deep ensemble shredding, and sometimes just guiding the crowd ahead to destinations unknown, with all the cosmic and boundless feelings and energies they’re known for.
Half the band descended to walk through the crowd on the lawn, the rest still blasting on stage; before long the adults got the hint, and as the evening sun set (or the edibles collectively hit – whichever came first!) bodies filled the grassy dancefloor in front of the stage to groove along with the Arkestra, as the music only grew bolder and more astral. It really doesn’t work to sit still while a band of the Arkestra’s caliber is grooving at full tilt, shifting the axis, and the pure, sweet human joy all around me was unmistakably heaven on Earth. Promptly at 8:30, the band began to slowly walk off the stage while still playing, a marvelous synth coda soundtracking as Scott sang, “We travel space ways / From planet to planet”; on to the next one, and aren’t they lucky, those who await wherever they land next.
