Latest news with #Arkestra
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Longtime Arkestra member Marshall Allen sitting out Sun Ra Festival in Birmingham
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — Marshall Allen, a jazz musician who has been associated with the Sun Ra Arkestra for nearly 70 years, will not be part of the upcoming festival in Birmingham celebrating the singular Herman Blount, better known as 'Sun Ra.' Marshall Allen, who will celebrate his 101st birthday on May 26, has been part of Sun Ra's band for decades, first joining when Blount was based in Chicago in the 1950s, continuing on through Sun Ra's death in 1993 and leading the band ever since. As longest serving member of the Arkestra, Allen led the band to its first Grammy nomination for 'Swirling,' a collection of Sun Ra standards released in 2020. Sun Ra took his music from Birmingham to outer space. For the first time, his band is nominated for a Grammy Lee Shook, organizer for the Sun Ra Festival being held May 21-24, confirmed that Allen, who has cut back on his performances with the band in recent years due to health concerns, would not be able to come to Birmingham for the festival. 'It will be his 101st birthday on May 26th, and we wanted to make it his birthday party as well, but have been told he cannot come because he does not fly anymore,' Shook said. 'We even had an angel donor offer to fly a private jet up to get him and take him back to Philly so he could be here for it, but alas his doctor said no, which we just found out about.' Shook said there are plans in the works to have Marshall take part in the festival through a Zoom call sometime during the festival, but nothing has been finalized yet. In an interview with CBS 42 ahead of his 100th birthday, Allen talked about how he is still creating music, but that life on the road at his age is just not realistic. 'You're always running after trains and planes and carrying all that baggage,' Allen said. 'I'm not so tired I can't work, but traveling is rough.' Nonetheless, Allen is still keeping busy with music, releasing his debut solo album, 'New Dawn,' in February, as well as taking part in recent collaborations with Meshell Ndegeocello on the Sun Ra-inspired album 'Red Hot & Ra: Magic City' and the Kronos Quartet on 'Outer Spaceways Incorporated – Kronos Quartet & Friends Meet Sun Ra.' Sun Ra, who took the public persona as an alien from Saturn, was born and raised in Birmingham, playing music with different bands before leaving for Chicago in 1945. Although he never reached the same cultural peaks as his contemporaries, Sun Ra and his music have continued to reach new generations and is considered a pivotal figure in afrofuturism, which reconfigures the Black experience through science fiction. He is buried at Elmwood Cemetery. More information on the Sun Ra Festival can be found here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Chicago Jazz
Jazz has experienced a meaningful resurgence in popularity over the past 15 years or so, especially among younger listeners. What's driving that? You could make the case that there is a particular hunger, now that so much of life is lived in the digital cloud, for the messy and untamed energy of jazz, and for its way of putting a live process on display. And if that's the case, then it makes a lot of sense that Chicago jazz has been at the forefront of this recent surge. Chicago has always represented a particularly rootsy, physical and — yes — windy ideal in jazz. So perhaps it's an especially heady antidote to that sense of digital disappearance. The Chicago jazz sound amounts to a sum of the city's Black histories: In it you can usually hear something of the snowy, clamoring traffic in Richard Wright's 'Native Son,' from 1940; the yowl of Howlin' Wolf's electric guitar in a 1950s blues bar; the drummers and dancers pounding out rhythms at one of Kelan Philip Cohran's gatherings at the 63rd Street Beach in the late 1960s; even the antiracist street protests of the 1990s. The Windy City was an important musical outpost from the start of the recorded era, when many blues and jazz musicians moved there from the South and became stars. It's also known as a cradle of the avant-garde, thanks to institutions like Sun Ra's Arkestra, established there in the early 1950s, and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a seed-sowing collective that celebrates its 60th anniversary this spring. Today, the city remains at the forefront of contemporary jazz thanks to artists like Nicole Mitchell, Kahil El'Zabar, Makaya McCraven, Tomeka Reid, Jeff Parker and Isaiah Collier, each a latter-day A.A.C.M. affiliate who has springboarded into a leading role on the international jazz circuit. And the label International Anthem, founded 12 years ago in Chicago, has become one of the biggest success stories in the indie-jazz business. We asked writers, musicians and other linchpins of the Chicago scene to tell us what tracks they would play to make a newcomer fall in love with the distinctive but multifaceted sound of Chicago jazz. Read on, listen to their picks in our playlists, and if you have favorites of your own, drop them in the comments. Image Ernest Khabeer Dawkins leading the New Horizons Ensemble. Credit... Jacob Blickenstaff for The New York Times This recording, featuring some of the stalwarts of Chicago's improvised music scene, should tantalize the palate of any listener new to creative music. The music is exploratory, while at the same time being funky and accessible. This Ernest Dawkins composition is a homage to Chicago's own Ameen Muhammad, who died in 2003 at 48. Muhammad, a dear friend of Dawkins, was not only a renowned trumpeter and composer but also a highly admired and respected educator; 'Mean Ameen' gained international notoriety over the course of his brief career. Ernest Khabeer Dawkins is one of those rare individuals who manages to balance a passion for community, mentorship and art. For me, this piece represents the saxophonist and bandleader at his best, through a beautiful dedication to a dear friend. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
