It’s easy to get angry about the state of music and its fascination with bandleaders over bands, backstories over music, pictures over sound. People like Marshall Allen (is there anyone else like him?) should keep us all hopeful. Making his debut as a “solo artist” at 100 years of age after a lifetime of service to the jazz community, specifically that of Sun Ra and his Arkestra, is quite something. One track on this album is entitled “Are You Ready?”, and I like to think it’s the question he asked himself before starting this project. Is such a long life of listening, thinking, playing and living long enough? It’s impossible to listen to this album without knowing he’s 100, and in that sense, it has an element of theatre about it, a specific anticipation before clicking “play” …a fleeting thought…“God I hope I like it, given the enormity of the event”.

Well, I do like it, and it’s for two reasons. Firstly, the sense of musical generosity amongst his band members, who provide the perfect accompaniment for a kind of leisurely unfolding of the leader’s ideas. But secondly, it’s Allen himself who seems to be pushing his bandmates, ensuring things never get too comfortable. For someone who spent 35 years with Sun Ra, perhaps the nature of comfort is not that of the typical centenarian.

Marshall Allen has been a veritable trooper for decades. And that comes over in his sound, a mature kaleidoscope of tones ranging between flute-like serenity and spluttering outbursts: like another great altoist, Henry Threadgill, the palette seems to deepen with age. Notes emerge rather than being produced, as if emanating from the gut more than the diaphragm, every tone seems, on closer listening, to have within it a world of overtones. The band sound here is luxurious, almost like a giant sonic duvet of acoustic grooves, strings, tasteful touches of delay and dub-like drum sounds, and some futuristic sounding lead synth. Having searched the credits and, with a bit of extra research on YouTube, I realise those synth sounds actually come from the Steiner EVI, a wind instrument often used by Michael Brecker (to very different effect). In Marshall Allen’s hands, gestures jump out at us like a black mamba in a mindfulness class. Indeed, it’s these playful interjections that give the music that extra depth and unpredictability.

“Prologue” opens with Allen’s beautifully recorded kora playing which, gradually overwhelmed by electronics, moves into the Ellington-esque “African Sunset”, where the EVI almost hovers above the music as well as being in it. Neneh Cherry guests on “New Dawn”, a drifting ballad that frames her unmistakable voice beautifully against Allen’s moving interjections. Cherry here has touches of Abbey Lincoln and Christine Tobin to my ears, but also has that timbre that identifies her like a fingerprint. “Are You Ready?” again references Ellington in its blues shuffle, with Allen sounding like Paul Gonsalves caught in a time warp between the past and the future, slipping and sliding. “Sonny’s Dance” opens with solo alto: Allen seems to evade the rules of pitch, like Ornette, Lockjaw Davies and others before him – it’s my favourite moment of the record. Textures are freer and looser here, pulse ebbs and flows. In “Boma” the band lays it down, with the main soloists allowing their leader to poke through with wild pirouettes. Again, it seems that he prefers occasional pointed commentary to extended solos, and at 100 I might feel the same. Still, each note he plays grabs the ear. “Angels And Demons At Play” revisits a classic of the Sun Ra days, drums and bass sitting on a beat while Allen and trumpeter Cecil Brooks allow a gentle exchange to unfold, with dub effects adding to the sense of the “cosmic” that Sun Ra embodied.

After my first listen of “New Dawn”, I went back and listened to Marshall Allen on Paul Bley’s album “Barrage” from 1964, the only other recording I know away from the Arkestra. And yes it’s different, but it’s not that different. It’s not sixty years different. Allen continues to be a real musical force, sounding as irascible and unpredictable as ever, and while this relatively accessible setting will gain him a lot of new fans, which can only be a good thing, the avant garde aspects of his sound are just as prominent here. If anything, set against a more modern production with solid grooves, Allen implores us all the more not to get comfortable…you never know what’s coming. Maybe it’s the embracing of that one idea that has kept Marshall Allen so youthful for so long: the living of life might just be what prolongs it.

Musicians:
Marshall Allen – Kora, Steiner EVI, Alto Sax
Knoel Scott – Baritone Sax, Congas, Drums
Cecil Brooks – Trumpet
Michael Ray – Trumpet
Bruce Edwards – Guitar
Jamaaladeen Tacuma – Bass
Richard Hill – Bass
Timothy Ragsdale – Bass
Owen Brown Jr – 1st Violin
Akiko Arendt – 1st Violin
Cristina Ardelean Montelongo – 1st Violin
Derek Washington – 2nd Violin
Elias Feldmann – 2nd Violin
Dimitra Karageorgopoulou – 2nd Violin
Michael Ireland – Viola
Vasileios Vasileiadis – Viola
Joseph Richard Carvell – Bass
Ilektra-Despoina Stevi – Cello
Jorik Bergman – Flute
George Gray – Drums
Jan Lankisch – Percussion

Special Guest:
Neneh Cherry – Voice

RELEASE DATE 14 February 2025

from https://ukjazznews.com