New Dawn: Vinyl LP
WE13Label: Week-End
Release Date: 14th February
Imagine being 100 years old, that is mad in itself but also comprehend at that age and after serving as a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra (since 1958!), almost 70 years onto your career and deciding you gotta get that debut album done? 'New Dawn' is just that for Marshall Allen as the saxophonist pulls off one of the sweetest jazz records of the year. The astral orchestral jazz is true to his roots with a slow bop swing that's mesmerising and perfect for lights down with something warming to drink listening.
Two days after his 100th birthday, Marshall Allen started recording New Dawn, his debut solo album. A member of Sun Ra’s Arkestra since 1958, Allen assumed leadership of the band in 1995. Throughout his nearly seventy-year career, Allen has never released a solo album under his own name, and yet, instead of capping such a legendary output, New Dawn seems to herald a new beginning. A love letter to spacetime, it channels a century of musical intelligence into seven tracks, showing Allen at his most protean—freely moving from relaxed, transdimensional palettes to bluesy big band and beyond.
One of music’s vanguard avant-saxophonists, Allen continues to deliver durational feats during the Arkestra’s gigs. Still, the compositional energy contained on New
Dawn is striking. Allen was approached with the idea of a solo record by Week-End Records’ Jan Lankisch. The Arkestra’s Knoel Scott — who has lived with Allen at the Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra since the 1980s — worked with Allen to pore over the archive of unrecorded material and develop this debut. Scott assembled some of Philadelphia’s brightest jazz stars as well as some Arkestra veterans for the sessions. New Dawn was then recorded over a couple of days in Philadelphia, with additional recordings to be added in the coming weeks and months. The legendary Neneh Cherry will lend her unmistakable voice to the title track “New Dawn”.
Though greatly informed by the philosophy of Sun Ra and his Saturnian teachings— traverse jazz’s traditions, dig deep into spiritual geographies — New Dawn signals Allen as his own singular voice, one that’s swinging and bopping and reflecting into the future, with no sign of stopping. Week-End Records is proud to release this debut solo album by Marshall Allen.
“New Dawn is clearly an extension of Ra’s legacy and sound, but it’s also a masterful endeavour filtered through Allen’s tastes and approach”. – John Morrison, The Wire, November 2024 (cover story)
Musicians:
Marshall Allen – Kora, EWI, Alto Sax
Knoel Scott – Baritone Sax, Congas, Drums Cecil Brooks – 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