Sun Ra Arkestra will perform this Sunday (7/9) at Pioneer Works in Red Hook as part of the art space’s Second Sundays program. The show is free and kicks off with a reading by trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, who was a member of the Arkestra for over 20 years, starting in 1974. He’ll be reading from his new book A Strange Celestial Road: My Life in the Sun Ra Arkestra, which comes out September 5 via Blank Forms. The book marks “the first full-length account of life in the Arkestra by any of its members,” and here’s the synopsis:

In this captivating memoir, the first full-length account of life in the Arkestra by any of its members, Harlem-born trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah recounts two decades of traveling the spaceways with the inimitable composer, pianist, and big-band leader Sun Ra. Gigging everywhere from the legendary Bed-Stuy venue the East to the National Stadium in Lagos, Abdullah paints a vivid picture of the rise of loft jazz and the influence of Pan-Africanism on creative music, while capturing radical artistic and political developments across Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan in the 1970s and ’80s. Richly illustrated with more than fifty pages of photographs and posters from Adger Cowans, Marilyn Nance, Val Wilmer, and others, A Strange Celestial Road interweaves the author’s own moving story—his battles with addiction, spiritual development, and life as a working class performer—with enthralling tales of tutelage under Cal Massey, collaborations with the likes of Ed Blackwell, Marion Brown, and Andrew Cyrille, and profound, occasionally confounding, mentorship by Sun Ra. Originally written in the 1990s with the help of Nuyorican poet Louis Reyes Rivera and published now for the first time, with a foreword by Salim Washington, A Strange Celestial Road is not only an autobiography, but a history of a remarkable and under-documented movement in music.

Abdullah’s reading on Sunday will feature his wife and chief collaborator Monique Ngozi Nri, bassist William Parker, and dancer Patricia Nicholson.

The Sun Ra Arkestra, currently led by Marshall Allen, just played a pair of shows at Nublu last weekend (7/2). Later this year they’ll head to Los Angeles for a show at Hollywood Bowl with Floating Points, Four Tet, Shabaka Hutchings, and more to pay tribute to Pharaoh Sanders’ “Promises.” They also usually close out Union Pool’s free Summer Thunder series — no word on that yet for this year, but stay tuned, and see all of their upcoming dates below.

Sun Ra Arkestra — 2023 Tour Dates
Sun July 9 Brooklyn, NY, Pioneer Works
Sun-Tue July 16-18 Portland, OR, Star Theater
Thu-Sun July 20-23 San Francisco, CA, SFJAZZ Center
Mon/Tue July 24/25. Los Angeles, CA, Zebulon
Thu/Fri August 10/11. London, U.K., The Forge
Sat August 12th. Liverpool, U.K., Invisible Wind Factory
Sun August 13th. Wimborne St. Giles, Dorset, U.K., We Out Here Festival
Mon August 14th. Locorotondo, Italy, Locus Festival
Thu August 17th. Jena, Germany, Kulturarena
Wed Sept. 20th. Los Angeles, CA, Hollywood Bowl
Sat Nov. 18th. Allentown, PA, Symphony Hall