Saxophonist Idris Ackamoor brings the future to the Mission

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After decades of pursuit, the future is finally catching up to Idris Ackamoor.

The San Francisco saxophonist, composer and leader of the jazz and world-music ensemble The Pyramids has been at the vanguard of the Afrofuturism for half a century, ever since it started to coalesce into a larger movement propelled by the sounds and iconography of composer, bandleader and poet Sun Ra.

At 74, Ackamoor is gathering newfound attention, all while in the middle of a highly productive run. Last month, he appeared at Knoxville’s famously omnivorous Big Ears festival with Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist Carlos Niño. On May 3, he performs with the Pyramids at Bang On a Can’s Long Play Festival in Brooklyn, and on June 15 he brings his Ankhestra to the revamped San Francisco Jazz Festival, somehow his first-ever SFJAZZ engagement.

But before he hits the festival circuit, Ackamoor is returning to the Mission for a reprise performance Saturday, April 19 at The Lab, celebrating the release of his new Strut Records double-vinyl album, “Artist Being,” in conjunction with International Record Store Day.

Fittingly, The Lab is where Ackamoor recorded the album last year, at a show called “Underground Jazz Cabaret.” It was both a reunion with actress and vocalist Rhodessa Jones, his longtime creative partner in the production company Cultural Odyssey, and a new alliance, as they were joined for the first time by film star Danny Glover, a friend since the early 1970s. 

Ackamoor will be exploring some of those pieces featuring stories of 20th century African-American life set to his jazz-steeped scores. But the artist is also casting a wider net, “paying homage to the four albums on Strut Records, playing the title tracks,” Ackamoor says, noting that the UK label acquired his archives in 2022 as part of a treasure trove of Black music, including Los Angeles keyboardist Patrice Rushen’s Elektra catalog and South African icon Miriam Makeba’s Reprise albums.

His brilliant string of releases includes 2016’s “We Be All Africans” and 2023’s homage to the movement exemplified by Sun Ra and sci-fi writers Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany, “Afro-Futuristic Dreams,” an album hailed by the jazz magazine Downbeat as “resistance music for our times, standing on the shoulders of ancestral wisdom to evoke joyful revelry and collective solidarity.”

Part of what makes Ackamoor’s music so rich, and what connects him conceptually to the legacy of Sun Ra, is that he’s maintained connections to a far-flung constellation of musicians who return again and again to perform his volatile musical rites. (Ra’s Arkestra continues to be led by 100-year-old saxophonist Marshall Allen, who joined the group in 1958.)

Some of Ackamoor’s key collaborators have been part of his variously named ensembles for more than five decades, like Vermont flutist Margaux Simmons, “my ex-wife and the mother of our daughter, who was with Cecil Taylor when we met,” he says, referring to the pianist and avant-garde jazz patriarch. “She’s coming out for all these shows.”  

Atlanta-based percussionist Bradie Speller is another founding member of the Pyramids who’s returning to the Bay Area to perform at The Lab. Berkeley bassist Heshima Mark Williams has worked with Ackamoor intermittently since the saxophonist moved to San Francisco in 1974. On one early gig, they were opening for the fusion supergroup Weather Report, “and they stole Bradie to go on tour with them,” Ackamoor recalls with a chuckle, noting that many band members have returned to the fold over the years.

Other longtime Pyramids performing at The Lab include violinist Sandra Poindexter and guitarist Bobby Cobb, while recent arrival Randall Merritt holds down the drum chair. Actress and performance artist Jones, who is also the founder and artistic director of the award-winning Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women and HIV Circle, returns for spoken-word passages and narration.

“We are this family that expands and contracts,” Ackamoor said. “Often, it has to do with the touring ecology.”

This will be a homecoming of sorts for the duo: He and Jones performed at Brava Theater frequently for many years when he was active in Cultural Odyssey, and the venue long served as a hub for their activities (she continues to serve as a Brava artist-in-residence). He’s also done seminars at the Mission Cultural Center, and generally been a presence in the neighborhood. Still, Ackamoor has long been more visible in Europe than at home.

Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids perform at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 19 at The Lab (2948 16th St). Tickets ($27 and up) and more info here.