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Article on me and Marshall regarding the program and mostly Marshall, with great comments. Enjoy!

Marshall Allen-Still Traveling The Spaceways
Frank Spignese / Special to The Daily Yomiuri

In 1957 saxophonist Marshall Allen met composer-pianist Sun Ra. Allen was soon asked to join Sun Ra's radical Arkestra and the two formed a relationship that found them traveling the "spaceways" for nearly 40 years.

To call Sun Ra's Arkestra "ahead of its time" would be an understatement. From its inception, the big band played jazz that incorporated bop, avant-garde and world music within a framework deeply steeped in the tradition. At times they sounded like an extraterrestrial Duke Ellington Orchestra.

After Sun Ra's passing in 1993, Allen assumed direction of the Arkestra and has forged on into the 21st century.

But Allen has his own project, too. He just spent the last week touring Japan, accompanying the silent films of experimental auteur James Harrar. Along with Harrar, on a number of instruments, they were joined by guitarist R.E. Mahoney. The music, like the music of the Arkestra, veered from meditative cacophony to celestial serenity. Later, at a grilled chicken joint outside Tokyo, the 82-year-old Allen swigged sake and smoked cigarettes like a fledgling salaryman. He spoke of fronting the Arkestra, the need for older artists to nurture the young and his dedication to Sun Ra's vision.

"It feels good to be back in Japan. Nice people, courteous, quiet. The food is good and really it's a healthy environment...healthier than my environment. I'll put it that way," he said with a laugh.

The 20-piece Arkestra finished a tour of Canada before Allen landed in Tokyo. One of the most striking aspects of the current incarnation is the number of young musicians and seasoned veterans playing collectively.

"We have to bring the younger musicians into the band to indoctrinate them in a sense, to get them out of the box that they were taught in," he said. "To get out of the box you have to break those rules. Sun Ra didn't want the musicians for what they know; he was trying to develop what they didn't know. He would always say 'That's right, but it's not what I want.' Which is very frustrating for a well schooled musician, and that was the hardest thing in my life: to get out of that box."

Allen has played with many rock-rap artists, including Sonic Youth, Phish and Digable Planets. Can jazz itself still reach young people?

"All the people we play for now are young people" he said. "This generation that's here now, whatever we play, they feel it. We have all the young people at the concerts and they just go wild! Sun Ra's music lives because it's all over the world like he said it would be."
"I've been in bands all my life" he continued. "I've played with the best players, the non-best players, I've played with everybody. But once you're at the helm, it's another story. After Sun Ra died, it came my turn to step up. Not that I wanted to, but it was a must to carry the music on. So my determination was to do what I've always done: play with all my heart and mind."

The films of James Harrar that Allen accompanied last week are imbued with a contemplative mysticism that mirrors the aesthetic of the Arkestra itself. Allen was impressed with Harrar's work and took the artist under his wing.

"I met James at a gig in the '90s" he said. "He was a young man and I like to help the young people. I introduced him to the band and that way he knows about Sun Ra. I'm not Sun Ra, but I've been taught by him and do my best to be one of his disciples. Sun Ra was interested in people who have ideas, so we invited him around to see what he was doing, then he came up with his films and he needed someone to help, so I said that I would."

Harrar says that he approaches film much like Allen approaches music.
"In my image making I'm dealing with discipline and sincerity. I want to capture some very profound spiritual states of mind but in a very simple way, without rhetoric, and Marshall and the Arkestra have a long history of taking jazz and blowing it up into something completely unique to themselves, but at the same time very traditional and in the discipline."

(Jun. 24, 2006)