Jazz Archives & Contemporary Horizons: A Critical Review of Recent Releases from Mick Goodrick, Orchestre National de Jazz, and Sun Ra

Executive Overview

The contemporary landscape of jazz criticism requires a delicate balance between honoring canonical historical artifacts and contextualizing forward-thinking institutional projects. In this comprehensive review, we examine three major recent releases that span the generational and stylistic spectrum of improvised music.

First, we explore a pristine reissue of In Pas(s)ing (ECM 1139), the 1978 leader debut by the late, profoundly influential guitarist and educator Mick Goodrick, captured alongside an elite rhythm and reed section comprising John Surman, Eddie Gomez, and Jack DeJohnette. Second, we dissect the Orchestre National de Jazz’s sprawling 2025 double-album tribute With Carla (ONJ Records 534444), arranged by Rémi Sciuto to honor the enduring, shape-shifting legacy of composer and pianist Carla Bley. Finally, we turn our attention to a valuable 180-gram vinyl compilation pairing Sun Ra’s Sound Sun Pleasure!! (1959) with We Travel The Space Ways (collected largely from 1960), offering a vital window into the cosmic visionary’s more accessible swing- and early avant-garde-inflected periods.

Together, these releases—ranging from quiet academic mastery and large-ensemble visionary homages to mid-century interplanetary classicism—provide a sweeping overview of the enduring mechanics of jazz history, pedagogy, and ongoing reinvention.

Detailed Chronology: From 1950s Chicago to 2025 French Institutional Innovation

1. The Mid-Century Cosmic Paradigm: Sun Ra (1956–1961)

Our historical chronology begins in the bustling, post-war jazz scene of Chicago, where Herman "Sun Ra" Blount was quietly orchestrating a sonic and philosophical revolution. The 180-gram vinyl package issued by Pan Am Records pairs two distinct statements from this foundational era: Sound Sun Pleasure!! (recorded around 1959) and We Travel The Space Ways (compiled primarily from 1960 sessions, drawing on material dating back to 1956).

During the late 1950s, Sun Ra’s Arkestra was not yet the sprawling, free-form, multi-media celestial collective it would become in New York and European exile during the late 1960s and 1970s. Instead, as evidenced on the first side of this release, the unit operated as a taut, roughly ten-piece ensemble heavily indebted to the sophisticated arranging tropes of the swing era and modern jazz tradition. Featuring six tunes—including standards like "’Round Midnight" and "I Could Have Danced All Night," alongside compositions by trumpeter Hobart Dobson—these performances showcase a band rich in reed power, featuring early appearances by stalwarts like Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, James Spaulding, and Pat Patrick. Vocalist Hattie Randolph adds a smoky, conventional blues-and-standards elegance to tracks like "Back In Your Own Backyard."

As the timeline shifts into the dawn of the 1960s with We Travel The Space Ways, the music begins to stretch at its seams. Yet, much of the material remains grounded in what might be called "Herman Blount music" rather than fully realized cosmic abstraction. Pianistically, Ra frequently anchors the arrangements on an acoustic or tack piano that possesses a distinctly rustic, unpolished pub-piano timbre. Exceptions to this earthbound classicism appear on tracks like "Interplanetary Music" and the title track, where the ensemble chants their titles in unison, culminating in the mechanical, futuristic whir of a robot sound effect. This pairing illustrates a crucial pedagogical truth about Sun Ra’s trajectory: long before he was launching listeners into outer space, he had thoroughly mastered the terrestrial vocabulary of big-band jazz, making his radical departures all the more powerful.

2. The Master Class in Subtlety: Mick Goodrick’s In Pas(s)ing (1978)

Fast-forward nearly two decades to Oslo, Norway, in 1978, where guitarist Mick Goodrick entered the studio to record his first album as a leader for ECM Records. By this point, Goodrick was already a trusted voice in modern creative music, having held down a coveted chair in the Gary Burton group alongside fellow guitarist Pat Metheny (appearing on five seminal albums, four of which were for ECM).

However, throughout his life, Goodrick regarded himself first and foremost as an educator and academic architect. His reluctance to seek the spotlight or churn out leader-dates meant his discography under his own name remained remarkably lean—only half a dozen albums in total. In Pas(s)ing captures him at his absolute peak as a collaborative thinker. Rather than stacking the session with sidemen intended to act as foils for his own ego, Goodrick enlisted three true heavyweights whose sensibilities matched his own naturally laid-back, unflashy aesthetic: reedist John Surman (utilizing soprano saxophone, baritone saxophone, and bass clarinet), bassist Eddie Gomez, and drummer Jack DeJohnette.

Goodrick contributed five original compositions to the session—a remarkable feat given his known aversion to the mechanics of tune-writing. The resulting music is defined by an absolute avoidance of excess. His lines are lyrical, measured, and stripped of all superfluous embellishment; he never wastes a note. Even the title track, frequently cited as an exercise in free improvisation, refuses to yield to the chaotic tropes often associated with the genre. Centered around a single foundational chord, the quartet weaves delicate, interlocking patterns of exceptional grace, demonstrating a level of internal listening and harmonic accord that remains breathtaking over four decades later.

3. The Institutional Tribute: Orchestre National De Jazz, With Carla (2025)

Crossing the threshold into the contemporary era, our chronology lands in 2025 with ONJ Records’ landmark release With Carla. Established in 1986 under the auspices of the French Ministry of Culture, the Orchestre National De Jazz (ONJ) has spent nearly four decades functioning as a primary institutional anchor for European large-ensemble music. Designed intentionally to rotate its personnel, the big band has consistently provided emerging generations of European musicians—including British luminaries like Chris Biscoe and Harry Beckett in earlier decades—with high-level orchestral experience. The ensemble’s expansive repertoire has historically embraced icons as diverse as Duke Ellington, Robert Wyatt, and Astor Piazzolla.

In this latest iteration, the orchestra turns its lens toward the multifaceted legacy of the late composer and pianist Carla Bley. Rather than offering slavish, note-for-note transcriptions of Bley’s recorded catalog, arranger Rémi Sciuto approaches her work with an ethos of organic expansion. Eight of the album’s compositions are Bley originals reimagined as expansive "extensions" that capture the foundational spirit of her compositional vision. These are supplemented by three original pieces by Sciuto himself and Bley’s personal arrangement of Carl Ruggles’ notoriously rugged modernist work, Exaltations.

Spanning two compact discs, the music unfolds with restless dynamism. Opening with Musique Mecanique, the ensemble introduces a rich string section that melts into chamber-music textures, Spanish-flavored melodic cells, and an exquisite flute solo by Sylvaine Helary. Throughout the sequence, conventional swing patterns are largely discarded in favor of fluid tempo shifts, sudden textural arrivals, and swift, ephemeral motivic developments. The exception is Ups And Downs, which utilizes a more traditional swing pulse while featuring sparkling, adventurous solos from trumpeter Quentin Ghomari and tenor saxophonist Hugues Mayot.

As the program deepens, the orchestrations explore diverse emotional terrain. In India utilizes string textures to frame a sombre, reflective landscape, while Wrong Key Donkey introduces a playful, rapid-fire urgency buoyed by the heavy-brass acrobatics of Fanny Meteier’s tuba and Jessica Simon’s trombone. Sciuto’s own Hypotheses serves as a slow, hymn-like ensemble celebration anchored by Hammond organ textures that bleed seamlessly into church-music references on Religious Experience and Major. The collection closes with End Of Vienna, a work of profound classical roots driven forward by the interwoven timbres of cello, flute, and piano. It stands not merely as a cover album, but as a living continuation of Bley’s most fiercely guarded artistic virtue: unyielding creative liberty.

Supporting Context & Metrics

To fully understand the weight of these three releases, one must examine the socio-musical ecosystems that produced them. Each artifact represents a distinct organizational model within the broader history of jazz: the cooperative-leaning studio session governed by ECM’s minimalist aesthetic; the state-subsidized, perpetually evolving European cultural institution; and the independent, Chicago-born avant-garde micro-economy of the mid-20th century.

Comparative Release Metrics and Institutional Frameworks

The pedagogical lineage tethering these releases is equally vital. Mick Goodrick’s legacy is perhaps best measured not strictly by his half-dozen albums as a leader, but by the seismic impact he exerted on generations of students at the New England Conservatory and Berklee College of Music. Visionary guitarists such as John Scofield and Bill Frisell have repeatedly underscored Goodrick’s foundational role in shaping their harmonic awareness and improvisational philosophies. By studying Goodrick’s approach on In Pas(s)ing—where space is valued above technical display and every note serves an architectural purpose—listeners can trace a direct line from the quiet rigors of 1970s academic mentorship to the expansive, unhurried soloing styles that defined modern guitar freedom.

Similarly, the Orchestre National De Jazz operates as a vital institutional academy. By offering stable, long-term employment and large-ensemble environments to successive waves of European improvisers, the ONJ ensures that the complex orchestration traditions pioneered by figures like Carla Bley, Duke Ellington, and Gil Evans are not merely preserved in amber, but aggressively re-engineered for contemporary ears.

Official Statements & Critical Reception

The critical reception surrounding these releases highlights their enduring importance to the global jazz canon. While initial industry reactions upon Mick Goodrick’s passing and subsequent archival reappraisals have consistently emphasized his self-effacing nature, contemporary reviews frame In Pas(s)ing as a masterclass in ensemble telepathy.

Reflecting on Goodrick’s methodology, jazz historians have frequently cited his foundational instructional text, The Advancing Guitarist (1987), as the logical extension of the aesthetic found on his 1978 ECM outing. In an era dominated by high-velocity technical exhibitionism, Goodrick’s recorded output served as a deliberate counter-statement. As noted in critical circles regarding the 1978 session:

"What the guitarist brings to the session is a set of varied compositions… his statements never exaggerated or superfluous, never wasting a note, always worthy of close attention from the listener—his ability to interact with his fellow group-members is constantly apparent."

Turning to the Orchestre National De Jazz’s With Carla, the critical consensus centers on the bravery of Rémi Sciuto’s arranging vision. Rather than treating Carla Bley’s idiosyncratic songbook as a museum exhibit requiring reverent, note-for-note preservation, Sciuto and the 19-piece ensemble approached the material with the same irreverent structural elasticity that characterized Bley’s own work with the Carla Bley Big Band and the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra.

Official statements from ONJ management emphasize that these works are "extensions" rather than reproductions. Reviewers have praised the ensemble for maintaining Bley’s signature blend of biting humor, hymn-like solemnity, and unexpected rhythmic shifts. The seamless integration of classical string textures, the rare usage of the musical saw, and the soaring brass acrobatics validate the French Ministry of Culture’s decades-long investment in maintaining a flagship big band capable of executing such ambitious, cross-genre repertoire.

Finally, the retrospective reassessment of Sun Ra’s transition-era recordings on the Pan Am 180-gram vinyl release reinforces the idea that Ra’s cosmic radicalism was built upon a bedrock of unimpeachable traditional craftsmanship. Critics examining the pairing of Sound Sun Pleasure!! and We Travel The Space Ways point out that Ra’s deep fluency in the language of Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and traditional Chicago swing gave him the authority to deconstruct those very idioms. As modern listeners engage with these mid-century recordings, the overarching critical takeaway is clear: accessibility and avant-garde exploration were never mutually exclusive in the expansive universe of Herman Blount.

Future Outlook

As the global jazz community continues to navigate the complexities of digital streaming, physical vinyl revivals, and institutional funding shifts, these three releases offer distinct roadmaps for the future of improvised music.

1. The Preservation of Pedagogical Lineage: As the generation of master educators who defined late-20th-century jazz education (such as Mick Goodrick) passes on, the archival re-examination of their sparse leader-catalogues will become increasingly crucial. Future scholarship must look beyond commercial discographies to document the unrecorded workshops, private lessons, and collaborative sessions that fundamentally shaped modern improvisers. Labels like ECM play an indispensable role in maintaining these high-fidelity monuments.
2. Institutional Flexibility and Repertoire Expansion: The continued success of state-supported entities like the Orchestre National De Jazz proves that big bands can thrive in the 21st century if they avoid stagnant nostalgia. By commissioning bold, prismatic "extensions" of iconic composers like Carla Bley rather than safe tribute tours, large ensembles secure their relevance among younger, genre-agnostic audiences who demand structural surprise and emotional depth.
3. Recontextualizing the Avant-Garde: Reissues of foundational catalogues—such as Sun Ra’s transition-era Chicago recordings—remind contemporary producers and listeners that true innovation rarely occurs in a vacuum. The future of creative music relies on acknowledging the deep roots of tradition that anchor even the most far-flung futuristic sonic explorations.

Ultimately, whether through the quiet, laser-focused harmonic explorations of Mick Goodrick’s guitar, the sprawling, state-of-the-art orchestral brilliance of the ONJ honoring Carla Bley, or the swinging, cosmic foundations of Sun Ra’s Arkestra, the health of contemporary jazz remains robust. These releases challenge both listener and performer to listen closer, think deeper, and approach the unfolding canvas of improvised music with uncompromising artistic integrity.