Rafael Toral

Space Quartet: Directions

by Mark Corroto
July 7, 2021

Listen closely to Directions by Rafael Toral's Space Quartet and try to ignore the voice in your head of June Tyson chanting, “space is the place, space is the place." While this is an instrumental production and Toral was born more than fifty years after Sun Ra, a similar aura permeates these six tracks. It's not that Toral is dealing with the evolution of big band music through the lens of Afrofuturism, like Sun Ra's early use of synthesizers and ...