At the age of 100, saxophonist, kora player and leader of the Germantown-based Sun Ra Arkestra, Marshall Allen, is doing something he’s never done before — a solo album.
Allen recorded his debut solo album, ‘New Dawn‘, and will celebrate with a release party on April 9 at World Café Live. After that, there is another non-Ra record from the saxophonist, ‘Live in Philadelphia’, from his even-newer band Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons, which holds its release party, May 23 at Solar Myth.
On top of all that, Allen has his duties as the Sun Ra Arkestra leader and arranger with its live dates to follow.
All this is to say, that kind of rigorous schedule is wildly busy for anyone, let alone someone one full century old.
“Everybody now wants distance, and there’s always this threat of violence, but music is without distance, without violence,” Allen told Metro from his home – the Ra House – in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, which doubles as the Arkestra’s dorm and rehearsal space.
Allen was speaking, then, about the Sun Ra Arkestra’s new Swirling album and the beginnings of his solo debut record.
‘New Dawn’ is indeed a solo effort apart from the Saturn-sailing, carnival funeral space jazz that we know and love from Sun Ra’s Arkestra. Together with fellow Sun player Knoel Scott, the ‘New Dawn’ album is gentler, smoother and more intimate than what fans have come to expect from Allen. His self-penned and arranged songbook dates back to his time with big band leader Jimmy Lunceford and stretches, more sweetly through the space and time continuum than ever. With that, from its grooving title track featuring Britain Neneh Cherry on vocals, to the hauntingly halting ‘African Sunset,’ ‘New Dawn’ is a truly apt album title.
“All these different feelings that you have, you write songs about them,” Allen said. “When love was in, everybody wrote about love. Every day I got a song. A pleasant melody, a chaotic melody. That’s the way I live. The vibrations are around. Sit quietly and concentrate and you can hear things, remember things, about being sincere and truthful.
“So I write what I write because that’s the way I feel today. Tomorrow I will have another feeling and another song,” he continues. “That’s the way the universe is. Everything is going on, and everything has its space. And you know what space is, right?”
Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons is another animal altogether. Starting as yet another side gig from Sun Ra’s Arkestra, Allen, fellow local saxophonist Elliot Levin and other new Ghosts made Broad Street’s Solar Myth their clubhouse, with the saxophonists turning out impromptu oblong avant-garde jazz whenever they could.
And it wasn’t always Levin who joined Allen. At any time, fellow musicians and poets such as forever Arkestra guitarist DMHotep, bassists William Parker, Eric Revis (the latter from the Branford Marsalis Quartet), keyboardist James McNew (from the alt-rock giants Yo La Tengo), saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, spoken word artist and electronic musician Wolf Eyers, singer Tara Middleton, and an array of drummers such as Chad Taylor, Tcheser Holmes (Irreversible Entanglements), Mikel Patrick Avery (Natural Information Society, Theaster Gates), and Charlie Hall (The War on Drugs) could be found making contemporary creative music with Allen.
The upcoming, two-album set, ‘Live in Philadelphia,’ released this May by Otherly Love Records and Solar Myth’s Mark Christman’s Ars Nova Workshop features snippets from all of the above-mentioned musicians, and so many more, across its “16 exploratory tracks from the ongoing series’ first two years, captured on stage at Solar Myth.”
From the moody ambient swell of ‘The Last Transmission,’ to the rock out ‘Square the Circle’ to a playful take on the Sun Ra classic ‘Seductive Fantasy,’ this is a live album in more ways than one.
Marshall Allen will perform at World Cafe Live on Wednesday, April 9, at 8 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.) For information and tickets, visit worldcafelive.org
Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons will host their record release party at Solar Myth on Friday, May 23, at 8 p.m. Tickets and information are available at solarmythbar.com
