Sun Ra, as well as anyone, proved that an artist could change with the times without being a dedicated follower of fashion. In fact, Ra and his music never stopped evolving. A series of albums recorded from 1978 to 1980—Lanquidity, On Jupiter, Sleeping Beauty, and Strange Celestial Road—demonstrate the influence on Ra of musical and production trends of the mid- and late-1970s, especially heavy, studio-enhanced dance floor grooves (traceable from soul and funk to disco), and atmospheric New Age "dream" pieces. But Ra never fully surrendered to these trends; it's arguable that he even embraced them. He adapted techniques, but what he created amounted more to reinventions than "File Under" genre works.

Celestial Love contains recordings made in September 1982 at New York's Variety Studios, which had hosted countless Sun Ra sessions since the late 1960s. This was one of the last extended sessions at Variety, and these recordings were the last studio works released on Sun Ra's own Saturn label (though the label did continue to press concert recordings, and new studio recordings did appear on other labels). Aside from their inclusion on Celestial Love, tracks from these sessions landed on the albums A Fireside Chat With Lucifer and Nuclear War. Since Nuclear War's contents overlapped with both Fireside Chat and Celestial Love, we have reconstituted the latter two as complete albums, thus covering all titles from these Variety dates.

Strut and Art Yard present another exclusive from the vast catalogue of cosmic jazz pioneer Sun Ra: a previously unreleased radio session most likely recorded at the WXPN FM radio studios in Philadelphia, 1974-5.

Following on immediately, Dark Myth Visitation Equation might be better known to some as Sun Ra In Egypt Vol.1 or alternatively, Nature's God. It's an album based in part on a Cairo TV broadcast, and the general tone of the record tends to eschew electronics in favour of the Arkestra's more conventional cosmic shuffle. Finishing off the album is the highly surreal 'Why Go To The Moon?', Sun Ra's equivalent of a three-minute pop song, drawing on a weird gospel feel and the usual interplanetary subject matter.

The planets align as the mighty Sun Ra Arkestra, under the direction of the maestro Marshall Allen, are releasing their first studio album in over twenty years, ‘Swirling’.

Recorded live at Storyville jazz club, New York, October 24 & 29, 1977. Quite simply one of Sun Ra's best live albums. This rare recording (originally on Horo records) finds Ra, along with a 19-piece Arkestra, playing a mix of his own compositions ('Images' and 'Lights') along with several jazz standards (including Jelly Roll Morton's 'King Porter Stomp' and Duke Ellington's 'Lightnin''). While Ra's own compositions were usually more avant-garde affairs, he always revelled in playing the classics as well in an effort to give his audience a lesson in jazz history."

Recorded live at the Zurich Jazz Festival in 1980, this was America's first taste of the wild abandon that is the Vienna Art Orchestra and expatriate Lauren Newton's glorious vocal instrument. This is a 13-piece big band led by the beautifully weird compositional, instructional, and arranging craziness of Mathias Rüegg. They trash and revere all traditions – both historical and avant-garde at the same time – while using them both along with carnival and circus music, classical forms and fugues, and French salon music. They swing here like a Mingus big band playing "Jelly Roll, But Mingus Rolls Better," with soloists who could care less what the ensemble chart says and vice versa. Newton, mixed high above the prattle, soars with the intensity of a pianist while blowing Jon Hendricks away at his own game. The fun really begins when the ensemble changes tempos two or three times and sections play against each other as in "Concerto Piccolo," even if begun by the lilting line of the title's instrument.

NEA Jazz Master Maria Schneider creates music that critics describe as “heartstoppingly gorgeous and beyond categorization.” With her orchestra, she introduces her bold new piece, Data Lords, which explores life simultaneously being lived through the natural and digital worlds.

This is the tenth CD by the 20-piece strong Aardvark Jazz Orchestra for Leo Records. Now in its 48th season, it's one of the longest continuously operating jazz orchestras in the world which is an incredible achievement of Mark Harvey, founder, music director, conductor, composer and a trumpet player. The music by Mark Harvey is grounded in large-scale structures that allow for solo and ensemble improvisation while cross-referencing textures, cordal and corale complexes, and rhythmic motifs. The spirit of Charles Ives hover over all of this, as elements emerge, merge, then fade away, as the tangible becomes intangible.

Mathias Rüegg's Vienna Art Orchestra had always been an eclectic bunch, working in the odd jazz or classical cover into its repertoire with some regularity, but for this release, the ensemble went whole hog, leaping into the oeuvre of that grandfather of minimalism, Erik Satie. Originally issued as a two-LP set, every track (save one evocative Gil Evans-y piece by Rüegg) is a Satie composition rearranged, often brilliantly, and generally highlighting two or three individual VAO members. This reductionist technique serves the band well, as it has often had a tendency toward weighty ponderousness. Here, the arrangements are light and linear, affording a supple but transparent platform for the soloists, who are clearly encouraged to venture out into jazzy territory.

From Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin to Mahler and Bartok, European classical music has been a source of inspiration to numerous jazz musicians. The 19th Century compositions of the Strauss family are the subject of All That Strauss, which documents a New Year's 2000 concert by the Vienna Art Orchestra–one of Europe's most adventurous big bands. It is quite appropriate that this Strauss tribute concert was performed in Vienna and that the orchestra has Vienna in its name; for many classical greats have lived in Austria's largest city, including Johann and Eduard Strauss. While the Vienna Art Orchestra's love of the Strauss legacy is obvious, the band doesn't treat its compositions like museum pieces. Instead, time-honored compositions like "Donauwalzer," "Albion Polka," "Ein Morgen, ein Mittag, ein Abend in Wien" and "Lagunen Walzer" are given serious jazz makeovers, and arranger Mathias Rüegg sees to it that the orchestra takes a lot of chances with the material.