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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Phill Niblock's The Magic Sun, Dave Soldier's The Eighth Hour of Amduat

Feb 3–28, 2021
169 Bowery, New York, NY 10002

Newly restored, Phill Niblock’s 1968 short film transmutes high-contrast, seemingly solarized closeups of jazz alien Sun Ra and his Arkestra into an astral tarantella of dark and light. And in polymath Dave Soldier’s new opera—riffing on a score nearly 3,500 years old—the Arkestra’s current leader, Marshall Allen, stars as the Egyptian god whose name Sun Ra commandeered. (A Zoom hang with Niblock and Soldier follows the first screening.) —E.E.