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Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra presents “Detroit: Motor City Jazz” at Rose Theater on Friday night, January 13, 2005.This image:Special guests of the night, from left, Yusef Lateef (tenor sax), Charles McPherson (alto sax), Marcus Belgrave (trumpet) and Curtis Fuller (trombone) with a Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra member Wycliffe Gordon (trombone). (Photo by Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images)
The festivities didn’t end there. On July 23, composer and trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah celebrated the debut of his memoir, A Strange Celestial Road: My Time in the Sun Ra Arkestra, with a book signing at Sista’s Place on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. Abdullah spoke to Amsterdam News about his new book, which had been in the works since 1997.
“I had just left the Sun Ra Arkestra, and I wanted to share my valuable experience of working with him and his understanding of who we are as Black people,” he said.
Abdullah toured with Sun Ra extensively and was featured on 25 of the bandleader’s recordings. He worked with the Arkestra on and off from 1975 until 1993, when Sun Ra passed away. “Sun Ra often told us [band members] he was doing music for the 21st century,” he said.
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Source: Black Enterprise
