Marshall Allen reflects on his journey through jazz

Marshall Allen connected jazz grant

Marshall Allen honored with Jazz Masters Fellowship for beingness of innovation 05:08

At the aureate property of 100, Marshall Allen is inactive connected tour. He's promoting New Dawn, his archetypal solo medium with his sanction and was honored Saturday with the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship.

Allen grew up successful Louisville, Kentucky, listening to the sounds of Duke Ellington's jazz orchestra. The clarinet was the archetypal instrumentality Allen learned to play. He past learned the saxophone, portion serving successful the Army set during World War II.

"I'm going successful similar I'm going to beryllium a hero. I'm going to bash this and that, but erstwhile I got that world of Army life, it was … it was different," helium said.

His dependable is unsocial due to the fact that helium doesn't conscionable play the written melody, helium adds random notes astatine random times to bespeak however the songs marque him feel.

"You conscionable person to beryllium connected the tone of the song," Allen said.

How Allen played and his reasons wherefore changed successful the precocious 1950s erstwhile helium met Herman Poole Blount, known arsenic Sun Ra. The composer and person of "Sun Ra Arkestra" aboriginal welcomed Allen into his group, but not without criticism.

"He said 'You dependable good, had a code and your disk and it dependable good, but it's not what I want.' I said, 'Now what is it that you want?' He is saying … 'I privation to perceive what you don't know.'"

Sun Ra's fascination with outer abstraction and the existent state it could connection inspired his cosmic blend of jazz, Afrofuturism and spiritual expression. He encouraged his artists to play from the bosom and improvise erstwhile they "felt the spirit."

For years, the radical lived unneurotic successful Philadelphia and practiced relentlessly.

"Rehearsed time and night," Allen said. "I had to get my subject together."

When Sun Ra died successful the aboriginal 1990s, Allen became the caller leader. For the past 30 years helium has been teaching musicians the creation of playing what they don't know.

Jazz euphony journey

Allen said jazz euphony is conscionable arsenic important contiguous arsenic it was erstwhile helium was starting out.

The regular of preparing for a amusement and investigating his instruments ne'er seems to get aged for Allen, who turns 101 adjacent month, and precocious performed successful Brooklyn, New York.

"I've been doing this truthful long," helium said. "70, 80, 90 years."

It's been clip good spent doing what helium loves, which is making radical consciousness something. He said what keeps him going with jazz is, "the tone of things and not knowing everything."

As for the adjacent procreation of musicians, Allen said they "have to gain it."

"If you privation to play music, you person to get it," helium said. "You person to beryllium successful a spirit. You person to play what you don't know."

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