Talk:The Spatial AKA Orchestra

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I would like to start the talk page to explain my changes to this article on 2 February 2012. The previous version was a good start and the personnel list was accurate and useful, but the main text did not adequately explain the origins of the band, merely mentioning Sun Ra in passing. The piece by Jerry Dammers in The Wire 301 reference of March 2009 makes it clear that the music of Sun Ra was the primary inspiration for Dammers' project, so I have made this clear and also mentioned the other repertoire which the band has adopted more recently. The previous author's description of the band as "an English jazz fusion group" I think was unsuitable, suggesting something like Morrissey - Mullen who were a quite different sort of band. And there is nothing particularly English about the band (as there would be in the English countryside, English literature etc); if it's merely a case of nationality the correct word would be "British" but I see no particular need to mention this. The link to Jerry Dammers indicates that he is British and there it is relevant in a biographical article on an individual. However I have retained the links to categories "English musical groups" and "Jazz fusion musicians" as I don't wish to remove the article from categories containing it.

I have retained unchanged the sentence on Ancient Egyptian costumes etc, adding a bracketed phrase to indicate that this too comes from Sun Ra and to reinstate the link to "Afrofuturism" which I had dropped more by accident than by design. In putting "Afrofuturism" in quotes I am following John F Szwed in his biography of Sun Ra as it is not a mainstream cultural concept.

I have changed "Barbican Theatre" to "Barbican concert hall" as these are different performance spaces in the Barbican Centre; the links to the Barbican's own website confirm that both the 2009 and 2011 performances were in the concert hall. The remarks on logistics of a large ensemble should be self-evident; if a reference is needed it could be the interview with Dammers on the Jools Holland show, however I don't know if a TV interview is regarded as a sufficiently verifiable reference.

In the personnel, the 2011 Barbican performance included some string players, I think it was a standard quartet of 2 violins, viola, cello, but I don't know the names of the players. If anyone knows it would be helpful to add them.