In 1990, three years before he left this planet, Sun Ra and the Arkestra were touring Europe, playing gigs in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, and the U.K. On July 24 and 25 of that year, the Arkestra stopped at Mondial Sound studio in Milan and recorded the album Mayan Temples, considered one of the best late-period Sun Ra studio albums.
For this recording, the Arkestra consisted of 15 musicians, including core members June Tyson (vocals), Marshall Allen and John Gilmore (saxophones), Michael Ray and Ahmed Abdullah (trumpets), Tyrone Hill (trombone), and James Jacson (bassoon), all musicians who at that point had been playing with Sun Ra for literally decades.
In addition to the lovely Mayan Temples, the LP contains nine other Sun Ra compositions, including a revised version of El Is A Sound of Joy from the Chicago sessions featured in Supersonic Jazz (1957) and Sound of Joy (1968), and three covers of standard ballads.
Mondial Sound was formed in 1984 and still operates in Milan. Here are some Google images of the Mondial Sound building today, to give you an idea of the sleek, ultra-modern setting in which the album was recorded in fashionable Milan.
Quite a step up from the rough-and-tumble Slug's Saloon of the Lower East Side and the Variety Recording Studio in the sleazy heart of 1970s Times Square.
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