“More traditional”?

I started turning pages in the October 25 New Yorker and found a listing for a Brooklyn jazz festival: Kurt Elling, Cecile McLoren Savant, and others. And then: “the Sun Ra Arkestra — led by nonagenarian saxophonist Marshall Allen — represent more traditional fare.”

What’s up with “more traditional”? More traditional than a singer singing a great American standard? I wondered whether the writer assumed, given Marshall Allen’s age, that the Arkestra is some old-timey outfit. But no, the writer knows jazz. So perhaps “more traditional” is a wink of sorts, given that the Arkestra (which has outlived Ra) has been going since the early 1950s.

I was hoping to see the Arkestra in April 2020: they were scheduled to play a free concert at a theater in east-central Illinois. But everything changed.