The stage comes ablaze with color and light as Michael Ray & The Cosmic Krewe take their places amidst a bewildering array of instruments and pulsing neon sculptures of strange design.

Multiple percussion stations, electronic keyboards, a set of steel pans on their stand, a grand piano, a set of traps, and a front line of trumpet, alto saxophone and valve trombone come into play, entering the musical fray with yelps of glee and moans and smears of rapture.

“This is dedicated to !” the brilliantly garbed trumpet man shouts, and first the piano, then an horns explodes out of the arrangement to blast its way across the harmonic sky, thundering and twisting the scales something fierce, scraping rhythms across counter-rhythms.

There’s a lot of the late Sun Ra in Michael Ray & The Cosmic Krewe. Deeply based in the Sun Ra concept of Cosmo-Drama, or jazz as performance art with a message, the Cosmic Krewe has developed out of the broad musical experience of trumpet man, composer and producer Michael Ray to bring us what its leader calls “Jazz From The Future―representing the other side of the boundary of the last possibility.

Ray continued to tour with Kool & the Gang after a 10 year stint in . While there he immersed himself in a funk of a different order. In New Orleans Michael experimented with an ever-expanding pool of musicians―more than 40 cats, to create a cosmic ensemble that could fuse the many sides of his musical personality into a new synthesis of Supersonic future and funk.

In 1993, Cosmic Krewe began making annual appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival; also appeared at Earshot Jazz in Seattle; multiple years at Discover Jazz in Burlington, VT; JVC, Knitting Factory and Texaco Jazz Festivals in New York, The Boston Globe Jazz Festival; Jacksonville, FL Jazz Fest; San Francisco Jazz Fest; Syracuse, NY Jazz Fest; Kansas City & Jazz Fest; and the Ann Arbor, MI Blues & Jazz Fest. He recently signed to a three record deal with New Orleans Indie label Monkey Hill Records (affiliated with , Cowboy Mouth, Bill Summers, Bayou Renegades), Ray brings members of both is New Orleans and new England Cosmic Krewe musicians together for a hot new release "Jazz Funk Of The Future" , with special guests - John Medeski and on board the Krewe ship. Cosmic Krewe audiences are an eclectic mixtures of baby boomer, jazz aficionados, neo-hippie jam band fans, alternative rockers, funk revivalists and folks looking for the creative and experimental.

Recordings: Cosmic Krewe: Evidence; Funk If I Know (1998-99); also dozens of Sun Ra albums, and the 1999 CD "Song For The Sun" by the Sun Ra Arkestra under the leadership of . Ray is heard on 7 platinum/Gold albums with Kool & The Gang, and more recently on alternative rock albums: ": A Live One", Galactic drummer Stanton Moore's "All Kooked Out" and even on John Sinclair & The Blues Scholars "Full Moon Night".

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