Sun Ra Arkestra Workshop and Jam at the Indyish Mess!

Picture this: In a pocket of stone stage and archway, in a park full of greenery and sun at a busy corner of St Laurent, mid-Montreal, crowds gather carrying trumpets and violins. The stage is crowded with over 15 legendary musicians. The park is transformed into a beer tent and the Indyish are converging for their Monthly Mess.

The artists on stage are legends decked out in astral Africana. They have played with every jazz great you can name and all the ones you can’t as well, plus Sonic Youth and Saturday Night Live. Their music - experimental futurist big band - is a religion about joyful noises, and over fifty years of building a musical community.

They are the SUN RA ARKESTRA under the direction of original member Marshall Allen, brought to you for a FREE experience, thanks to AKG, Suoni and your resident schemers here at Indyish. They’ve asked you all to bring your instruments and trundle down to have beers with us in the park, to play with the Arkestra in the sunny afternoon of a Friday the 13th of June, to fill the park and the streets with joyful rebellious noises, to help Indyish make this month’s Mess show an unprecedented celebration, contributing with big band jam to the Fringe’s Festival of Freedom of Expression.

We’ll trundle in early for the Sun RA workshop and Jam, culminating with an improvised collaboration between the Arkestra and some special (belly! fire!) dancers from Ethereal Tribal. Then we’ll keep the loud, well-armed, and participatory crowd enthralled with beautiful live music experiments, like James Finnerty and Erik Virtanen playing with a women’s choir, and jumbo joyful concatenations like the franglais cabaret The Subcollisions with special circus friends, and The Winks (sneaky pretty little cello-looping sprites) with fireworks, and a secret hodge podge band made up of every Montreal band non-Montrealers have ever heard of.

Our host for this epic madness is mistress Penny Ashton, also known as Busty Rhymes. She’s a saucy spoken word artist who is also a world champ improviser, traveled here with her Fringe show all the way from New Zealand.

• Busty Rhymes
• Ethereal Tribal Dancers
• The Subcollisions
• The Winks
• Erik Virtanen
• James Finnerty

Check out the beauty poster by G Blott:

Indyish Marathon Mess at the Fringe
Parc Des Ameriques - corner St Laurent and Rachelle
Friday June 13, 2008
2pm-9pm
pay-what-you-can

Note: this workshop with Sun Ra Arkestra takes place the day before their major show in the Suoni Per il Popolo / OFF Jazz Festival, June 14 at Sala Rosa. Info Here!