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Artist
Marion Brown
12+ albums
free jazzjazzAvant-GardeAvant-Garde Jazzsaxophone
about
Marion Brown (September 8, 1931 – October 18, 2010) was a jazz alto saxophonist and ethnomusicologist. He is most well-known as a member of the 1960s avant-garde jazz scene in New York City, playing alongside musicians such as John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai. He performed on Coltrane's landmark 1965 album Ascension. Brown was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1931. He joined the Army in 1953 and in 1956 went to Clark College to study music. In 1960 Brown left Atlanta and studied pre-law at Howard University for two years. He moved to New York in 1962 where he befriended poet Amiri Baraka and many musicians such as Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Pharaoh Sanders, Paul Bley and Rashied Ali. He appeared on several important albums from this period such as Shepp's Fire Music and New Wave in Jazz, but most notably John Coltrane's Ascension. In 1967 Brown travelled to Paris, France where he developed an interest in architecture, Impressionistic art, African music and the music of Eric Satie. In the late 1960s, he was an American Fellow in Music Composition and Performance at the Cité Internationale Des Artists in Paris. Around 1970, he provided the soundtrack for Marcel Camus' film "Le Temps fou", a soundtrack featuring Steve McCall, Barre Phillips, Ambrose Jackson and Gunter Hampel. He returned to the US in 1970, where he felt a newfound sense of creative drive. Brown moved to New Haven, Connecticut to serve as a resource teacher in a child study center in the ci
