The Sea Ensemble

*Limited edition of 600 copies* Nomadic spiritual jazz duo The Sea Ensemble embodied the ethos of their era and art to a uniquely poetic degree. Founded in the early 1970’s by ethnomusicologist Zusaan Kali Fasteau and versatile instrumentalist Donald Rafael Garrett (sideman to John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Roland Kirk, among others), the couple’s lifestyle mirrored their music: restless, questing, collaborative, and improvised. Their itinerant journeying spanned Senegal, Congo, Morocco, Haiti, France, Holland, Turkey, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Yugoslavia, bonding with likeminded visionaries and bohemians everywhere they went – including sharing the stage with Sun Ra’s Arkestra for the canonical Concert For The Comet Kohoutek.

Memoirs of a Dream remains perhaps the group’s defining archival document. Originally self-released by Fasteau’s Flying Note imprint as a double CD in 2000 – 11 years after Garrett’s passing – the collection includes a pair of adventurous longform studio creations recorded in Leiden, Holland in May of 1975 as well as a vividly intimate and experimental live performance from Ankara, Turkey two years later. The breadth of textures and instruments on display reflects the duo’s expansive travels: piano, harp, balafon, conch, kaval, ney, cello, sheng, sanza, clarinet, contrabass, shakuhachi, percussion, tanbur. Theirs is a muse both monastic and ecstatic, fueled equally by hermetic chemistries and cosmic wanderings.

Fasteau’s death in 2020, during the assembly of this reissue, lends the proceedings a deeper air of gravity and fragility. The Sea Ensemble congealed in a fleeting subcultural moment, twin souls seeking something elusive and transcendent in sound and daily life. They prioritized connectivity over career, forever changing, learning, and refining. Their legacy of global inclusivity and “comprovisational” methods echoes that of other jazz guiding lights, from Don Cherry to Alice Coltrane. Memoirs Of A Dream rings through time as a dizzying gift, rich with wisdom and weirdness sifted from decades on the seeker’s path: “Welcome to a feast of sound and movement…. eat heartily and chew your food.”