Allen Lowe is a saxophonist, guitarist, mastering engineer and music historian. He has recorded as a leader with David Murray, Doc Cheatham, Don Byron, Julius Hemphill, Roswell Rudd and Loren Schoenberg, and has worked with Sun Records veteran Billy Riley. He has performed nationally and internationally, including performances at New York City’s Knitting Factory and the club Sweet Basil. He has released 6 compact discs under his own name. There are entries about him in the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz and The Penguin Guide to Jazz on Compact Disc. There is a chapter on him in the book Bebop and Nothingness, by Francis Davis (Schirmer Books: 1996).
He has a new recording project featuring Marc Ribot, Erin McKeown, Randy Sandke, Lewis Porter, and Matthew Shipp.
He has recently received grants from the Maine Arts Commission (the Good Ideas Grant) and the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies (to conduct research and writing). In the past he has received grants from the Connecticut Humanities Council, the Teason Fund and the Morroe Berger-Benny Carter Research Fund. He has appeared on Terry Gross’s show Fresh Air to discuss his book American Pop From Minstrel to Mojo, and has served as a consultant to Fresh Air on music history.
He has also been a consultant to the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and the Smithsonian. He was a consultant to Ken Burns for Burns’s 9-hourPBS history of jazz. and has consulted with Rhino Records and Shout Records on music history reissue projects. He has presented at the annual EMP Pop Conference, and moderated a panel at that conference in 2007.
From 1990-1992 he was the Director of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, for the City of New Haven, Connecticut. He was the Director of Jazz New Haven, a summer series that played annually to 100,000-150,000 people and whose participants included Jaki Byard, Max Roach, Tony Williams, Tito Puente, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Lovano, Randy Brecker, Ray Barretto, and James Moody.
He has lectured overseas for the United States Information Agency, has lectured at the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, and at the Experience Museum Pop Conference in Seattle.
He has published the books: American Pop from Minstrel to Mojo (Cadence), and That Devilin Tune: A Jazz History (Music and Arts), and has a rock and roll history: God Didn’t Like It: Electric Hillbillies, Singing Preachers, and the Early History of Rock and Roll scheduled for 2008 publication.
He has mastered and restored recordings for Rhino, Terry Gross/Fresh Air, Sony Music, Michael Feinstein, National Public Radio, Billy Crash Craddock, Shout Factory, Rykodisc and Ken Burns, and had one of his restorations used in the film, Brother Where Art Thou.
His 9 CD Project American Pop From Minstrel to Mojo has been widely recognized as a landmark music history project (“With American Pop Lowe has produced what may stand for years to come as the most exhaustive and – at the same time – iconoclastic look at how we progressed from the stiff quaintness of turn-of-the-century barbershop quartets to the first chaotic heartbeats of rock’n’roll…the result is stunning. It is the best and only of its kind, the closest depiction of how America sings.”- Blues Access Magazine); he has recently curated, written the notes for, and mastered a 36 CD set on the history of jazz from 1895-1950 (issued as That Devilin’ Tune), described by Cadence Magazine as “a near revelation”.
He has mastered and restored recordings for Rhino, Terry Gross/Fresh Air, Sony Music, Michael Feinstein, National Public Radio, Billy Crash Craddock, Shout Factory, Rykodisc and Ken Burns, and had one of his restorations used in the film, Brother Where Art Thou.
His 9 CD Project American Pop From Minstrel to Mojo has been widely recognized as a landmark music history project (“With American Pop Lowe has produced what may stand for years to come as the most exhaustive and – at the same time – iconoclastic look at how we progressed from the stiff quaintness of turn-of-the-century barbershop quartets to the first chaotic heartbeats of rock’n’roll…the result is stunning. It is the best and only of its kind, the closest depiction of how America sings.”- Blues Access Magazine); he has recently curated, written the notes for, and mastered a 36 CD set on the history of jazz from 1895-1950 (issued as That Devilin’ Tune), described by Cadence Magazine as “a near revelation”.