Marshall Allen at 100 + classic live Arkestra

Impressions of two recent New York shows and some illuminating vintage YouTube finds

What does a jazz musician sound like at age 100? We haven’t had many (any?) opportunities to find out. That’s the question that was on my mind heading into a pair of recent New York concerts by the newly century-old Marshall Allen. The experience of witnessing those two great, very different nights fed into this New York Times piece, my first Critic’s Notebook feature for the paper.

I’m going to be up front: I love the music of Sun Ra and the Arkestra, but I find the sprawling discography to be daunting and more than a little bewildering. I enjoy a lot of Sun Ra on record, and extend my heartfelt props and gratitude to other writers and fans who have taken a serious crack at taking stock of the catalog (as my friend and noted Sun Ra-logist Brad Farberman did a few years back), but I definitely don’t feel like I have my head all the way around it.

I enjoyed dipping back into the recorded legacy in preparation for writing about Allen and the Arkestra (a few favorite pieces are linked in the Times article), but another source turned out to be even more illuminating: YouTube. Until I started watching videos of full-length vintage Arkestra performances, I don’t feel like I ever really had a handle on the scope of the Sun Ra project, the way it fluidly spanned genres and mediums, with each concert unfolding like some kind of fantastical dream. Here are three examples that really moved me:

Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival, 1979:

Some primo June Tyson here, as well as a Marshall Allen intro on kora! Look out for a fascinating passage round the 17:00 mark where Sun Ra is conducting the ensemble with hand gestures, and an incredible Allen alto solo around the 22:40 mark.

Live at the Jazz Jamboree in Warsaw, Poland, 1987:

Love the prominence of dance and movement in this performance. Check out how much space the dancers are given around the 11:00 mark, essentially soloing like their musician counterparts, and how much the members of the band seem to be enjoying the looseness and camaraderie of the proceedings. Smiles abound, and the whole thing feels like one big avant-garde carnival / block party.

Live in Aarhus, Denmark, 1976:

More beautiful June Tyson here, some wild Ra keyboard work, and, around the 23:00, an absolute must-watch sequence in which Allen and the other saxophonists square off in a theatrical, almost martial-arts-esque formation. Oh, to have seen the Arkestra back in the day, but that said, the current gigs are a total blast. Catch them when-/wherever you can!