Duke Ellington: Cosmic Scene (LP)

After his enormous success at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956, Duke Ellington obtained a free ticket to produce whatever project he wanted to, and in 1958 he decided to temporarily reduce his touring orchestra to a nonet which he called the Spacemen. With this unit, he made a single studio album, The Cosmic Scene. Perhaps inspired by the first orbiting satellites, wrote Michael G. Nastos in All Music Guide, Ellington is not taking cues from George Russell or Sun Ra, whose extraterrestrial inspirations led them to even more progressive paths.