Allen Lowe

Allen Lowe
Background information
Born (1954-04-05) April 5, 1954
Massapequa Park, New York
Genres Jazz
Occupation(s) composer, musician, music historian, author
Instruments Alto Saxophone, Guitar, C melody saxophone
Years active 1964-1996, 2001-present
Labels Constant Sorrow
Website http://www.allenlowe.com/

Allen Lowe is a composer, musician, music historian, sound restoration specialist, and author. He plays alto saxophone, c-melody saxophone, and guitar, and has recorded with some of the major figures in Jazz, including Julius Hemphill, Marc Ribot, Roswell Rudd, Don Byron, Doc Cheatham, and David Murray among others. He has also produced a series of historical projects on American Popular Song, Jazz, and the Blues.

Early life and education

Allen grew up in Massapequa Park, New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He started playing saxophone in jazz groups at age 15 and had some of his first jazz experiences, as a teenager, at the legendary Lower East Side "Slugs Saloon,"[1] seeing Ornette Coleman’s band and Charles Mingus, among others. Coming of age at the end of the 1960s he also saw groups like Super Session (Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper), the Grateful Dead (at their first Central Park concert in 1967), the Mothers of Invention (at Columbia University, 1968). Not to mention Louis Armstrong at Freedomland, circa 1964. When his young band (with guitarist Joel Perry) was booked for a festival in Bedford Stuyvesant circa 1968, they turned out to be one of the opening acts for the comeback appearance of Eubie Blake.

Allen dropped out of the Yale School of Drama after one year of studying to be a playwright. He met and married his wife and they moved to Brooklyn where Allen completed a master's degree in Library Sciences (1982) from St. John's University.

Career

After graducation, Lowe and his wife moved to New Haven, where Lowe returned to his saxophone and became active in the local jazz scene with musicians like the bassist Jeff Fuller and drummer Ray Kaczynski. Originally an unreconstructed bebopper, he gradually became more and more interested in what was then known as “new music,” and began composing, performing and recording more actively in the new idiom. Allen recorded his first LP, For Poor B.B.' in 1985 and quickly recorded a series of albums in collaboration with musicians like Julius Hemphill, Don Byron, David Murray, Doc Cheatham, Roswell Rudd, Loren Schoenberg, Jimmy Knepper, Randy Sandke. Allen recorded Mental Strain at Dawn live at the Knitting Factory[2] with his Jack Purvis Memorial Orchestra and later recorded sessions for Enja and Music and Arts’.

In 1990 Lowe began working for the Mayor of New Haven, and became Director of Jazz New Haven, the yearly summer free outdoor festival held on the New Haven Green. He ran the festival for three years, booking musicians like Tony Williams, Max Roach, Jaki Byard, Tito Puente, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Lovano, Randy Brecker, Ray Barretto, and James Moody.

In 1996 he moved to South Portland Maine, and what followed was a period of involuntary musical retirement. Allen switched gears and began composing again, and also taught himself the technique of sound restoration. During this time Lowe wrote four books – American Pop from Minstrel to Mojo (a survey of American music from 1896-1946, published by Cadence[3] and issued with a 9-CD set); That Devilin’ Tune: A Jazz History 1900-1950 (published by Music and Arts[4] and issued with a 36-CD set); God Didn’t Like It: Electric Hillbillies, Singing Preachers, and the Beginning of Rock and Roll, 1950-1970 (Constant Sorrow Press 2013); The Lost Generation: Jazz of the 1950s (unpublished); and Really the Blues? A Blues History, 1893-1959 (Constant Sorrow Press 2013, and accompanying 36-CD set). Lowe did all mastering and sound restoration for the CD's that accompanied his publications. Low also began doing freelance sound work for Rhino, Shout, Rykodisc, Sony, Michael Feinstein, Terry Gross, Venus Records, and others.

In the meantime, Lowe was also doing yearly lectures on various musical topics, and moderating panels at the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies[5] and the annual EMP Pop Conference in Seattle, Washington. He also lectured for the United States Information Agency in Europe on American music history. His books were used in courses at both Harvard and Yale (Devlin Tune), and entries appeared on him in the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz and The Penguin Guide to Jazz on Compact Disc. There is also an entire chapter on him in the book Bebop and Nothingness, by Francis Davis.

Finally, around 2001, Lowe began playing and recording again, on both guitar and alto saxophone. In 2007 he recorded Jews in Hell: Radical Jewish Acculturation with Matthew Shipp, Lewis Porter, Randy Sandke, Marc Ribot, Scott Robinson, and Erin Mckeown. A mix of jazz, punk rock, and American roots music, it received little national notice, but high praise from the likes of Anthony Braxton who said “Allen Lowe is a great writer. It’s hillbilly music but it’s trans-national. Allen Lowe is one of the few musicians doing anything new today. He is the tradition. I’m a big fan of Allen Lowe and I think as a musician and a scholar he is very important and I think he is deeply misunderstood because he doesn’t hate himself.” Jews in Hell also led to Lowe’s inclusion in a book called Jazz Jews in which it was advised that Lowe “extracts the most soulful sounds out of a synthesizer since Steve Wonder, composes ambient-evocative instrumentals, and songs with vernacular lyrics that stick in the mind like those of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Mose Allison or Lou Reed.”

Allen recently released a series of old and new American recordings of work that were composed and directed by himself. He is currently working with Acadia Recording Company to mix a session live recording from NYC in 2015.

Discography

Allen's music can be downloaded from

Album Year Released Label Collaborating Musicians
Ballad for Albert (In the Diaspora of the Diaspora) 2015 Constant Sorrow With Matthew Shipp, Kevin Ray, Jake Millett
We Will Gather When We Gather (In the Diaspora of the Diaspora) 2015 Constant Sorrow With Hamiet Bluiett, Lou Grassi, Matt Lavelle, Kevin Ray, Jake Millett, Ras Moshe Burnett, Ava Mendoza
Man with Guitar: Where's Robert Johnson? (In the Diaspora of the Diaspora) 2015 Constant Sorrow With Gary Bartz, DJ Logic, Brian Simontacchi, Christopher Meeder, Jake Millett, Lewis Porter, Jeff Fuller
Where a Cigarette is Smoked by Ten Men (In the Diaspora of the Diaspora) 2015 Constant Sorrow With Zoe Christiansen, Kris Day, Miki Matsuki
I Alone: The Everlasting Beauty of Monotony (Matthew Shipp Plays the Music of Allen Lowe) 2015 Constant Sorrow With Michael Gregory Jackson, Eliot Cardinaux, Chris Klaxton, Kevin Ray, Peter McLaughlin, Ryan Blotnick
Mulatto Radio: Field Recordings 1-4, or: A Jew at Large in the Minstrel Diaspora 2014 Constant Sorrow With Matthew Shipp, Kalaparusha, Ken Peplowski, Randy Sandke, Noah Preminger, Ras Moshe, Ursula Oppens, Lou Grassi, Rob Wallace, Ray Suhy, Kevin Ray, Rick Moodty, Lewis Porter, Jon-Erik Kellso
Blues and the Empirical Truth (or: Every Other Day I Have The Blues) 2011 Music and Arts With Roswell Rudd, Matthew Shipp.
Jews in Hell: Radical Jewish Acculturation 2007 Spaceout Records With Matthew Shipp, Erin McKeown, Lewis Porter, Marc Ribot, Randy Sandke
Woyzeck's Death 1995 Enja Records With Roswell Rudd, Randy Sandke
Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground: The American Song Project 1994 Music and Arts With Roswell Rudd
Mental Strain At Dawn: A Modern Portrait of Louis Armstrong 1992 Stash Records With David Murray, Doc Cheatham, Loren Schoenberg
New Tango '92 1992 Fairhaven Records With Julius Hemphill, Doc Cheatham
At the Moment of Impact 1991 Fairhaven Records With Julius Hemphill, Don Byron, Jeff Fuller, Ray Kaczynski
For Poor B.B. 1988 Fairhaven Records With Bob Neloms

Publications

Really The Blues? A Blues History, 1893-1959

Published by Constant Sorrow Press, 2013. 36-CD set concurrently published by West Hill Radio Archive, 2010.[6]

A look at the blues and its close relations from 1900-1960; covers nearly all blue styles of the American vernacular, from gospel quartets to show music, minstrelsy, country and hillbilly music, and jazz.

That Devilin’ Tune: A Jazz History, 1900-1950

Published by Music and Arts Publications of America, 2001. 36-CD set issued concurrently, Spring 2006 by West Hill Radio Archive (Canada) and West Hill Radio Archive (Germany).

A comprehensive history of jazz from 1900-1950 that moves away from the clichés of most jazz works, looks at both the famous and the obscure, and presents the most detailed look available on the pre-history of jazz as well as its relationship to both country music and the blues. It also has perceptive discussions of minstrelsy and the post-Sudhalter issue of white and black influences on the development of jazz and improvised music.

American Pop From Minstrel to Mojo: On Record, 1890-1956

Published by Cadence Jazz Books, 1997. 9-CD set issued[7] concurrently by West Hill Radio Archive (Canada) and West Hill Radio Archive (Germany). Allen curated, restored, mastered, and wrote liner notes for the tracks.

An early and pioneering look at the big picture of American popular music from the period of early pop and jazz to Elvis. Unorthodox in its characterization both minstrelsy and the interaction of white and black musicians, it deals with a plethora of styles from gospel to blues to rock and roll, jazz, white and black pop, and country/hillbilly music.

The Lost Generation: Jazz of the 1950s

Unpublished manuscript; work in progess, book and 9-CD set study of jazz of the 1950s'

God Didn’t Like It: Electric Hillbillies, Singing Priests, and the Origins of Rock and Roll, 1950-1970.

Published by Constant Sorrow Press, 2013.

An examination of the early days of rock and roll, it’s pre-history and development thought the period of the 1960s; with a close look at the early development of country music. Unlike most rock writers Allen Lowe settles on a picture of the music as essentially a white expression, a “white meditation on black forms.’

Rhapsodies in Black: Music of the Harlem Renaissance

4-CD set on the music of the Harlem renaissance. Issued by Rhino Records. Set was nominated for 2002 Grammy Award (Gerald Early) for Liner Notes.

Education

Grants & lectures

References

  1. "‘It Was a Joint’: Jazz Musicians Remember Slugs’ in the Far East". Bedford + Bowery. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
  2. "Jazz Reviews: Mental Strain at Dawn: A Modern Portrait of Louis ArmstrongVarious Artists - By Mike Shanley — Jazz Articles". jazztimes.com. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
  3. "American Pop from Minstrel to Mojo: On Record 1893-1956 by Allen Lowe | Cadence Jazz Books". www.cadencejazzbooks.com. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
  4. "THAT DEVILIN' TUNE: Volume 1 (of 4) [1895-1927]". www.musicandarts.com. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
  5. "Jazz Research Round Table". newarkwww.rutgers.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
  6. "Presto Classical - Buy classical CDs, opera CDs, & DVDs online". www.prestoclassical.co.uk. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
  7. "American Pop: An Audio History - Various Artists | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 2015-11-06.
  8. "Maine Artist Fellowship". mainearts.maine.gov. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
  9. "Maine Arts Commission announces 2012 Fellowship awardees". The Bangor Daily News. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
  10. "Institute Of Jazz Studies - Rutgers University". newarkwww.rutgers.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
  11. "Two-day Program In New Haven Explores American Music". tribunedigital-thecourant. Retrieved 2015-11-05.

External links

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