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Makanda Ken McIntyre

World-renowned multi-instrumentalist, composer, orchestrator and educator Makanda Ken McIntyre was a tireless musical innovator for nearly half a century, with 12 albums and more than 600 compositions and arrangements to his credit. His works include compositions for woodwind quartets, chamber ensembles, jazz bands, and full orchestra, as well as hundreds of lead sheets. He composed ballads, calypsos, bebop, avant-garde and the blues.

Makanda was known primarily for leading his own ensembles — performing on alto saxophone, flute, bass clarinet, oboe and bassoon — and being proficient on more than 16 instruments, including bass, drums and piano. His playing on all these instruments projected a highly energetic, celebratory life force.

Makanda, whose given name was "Kenneth Arthur McIntyre," was born on September 7, 1931 in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents, who were from Jamaica, raised him in the South End, a largely West Indian area. He picked up his first saxophone at the late age of 19 after being inspired by Charlie Parker. He made up for lost time through tireless practice and discipline.

After serving two years in the Army, Makanda earned his bachelors in Music Composition from the Boston Conservatory of Music in 1958, with a certificate in flute performance; a Masters in Music Composition from the Boston Conservatory in 1959. He took an Ed.D. in Curriculum Design from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1975.

His tremendous work ethic was evident throughout his life and his teachings. He committed himself to inspiring all people about music and believed in the unlimited potential of every student. Makanda taught extensively in the New York City schools and also served on the faculties of Central State University, Wesleyan University, Fordham University, Smith College, and the New School University Jazz and Contemporary Music Department. In 1971, he began a 24-year tenure at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury. At Old Westbury, he founded and chaired the American Music, Dance and Theatre Program, which was one of the country's first departments dedicated to the arts in the African American tradition. Makanda designed and taught more than 10 courses in instrumental music, arranging, history, theory and composition. He retired as a professor emeritus from Old Westbury in 1995.

In 1983, Makanda founded The Contemporary African American Music Organization (CAAMO) to promote free expression and continuing education in music and the performing arts with African American origins. CAAMO held more than 250 performances and educational workshops throughout the New York area. The CAAMO orchestra performed in many venues, including Carnegie Recital Hall, throughout the 80's.

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10
Album Review

Bill Dixon: With Archie Shepp, 7-Tette & Orchestra Revisited

Read "With Archie Shepp, 7-Tette & Orchestra Revisited" reviewed by Chris May


If Bill Dixon is today, in 2023, less widely remembered than other New Thing warriors such as Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, it is partly because he had little desire for celebrity, devoting much of his energy to organizing on behalf of his fellow musicians and composers, and teaching. In 1964, midway through making the 1962-1967 recordings collected on this album, Dixon organized the historic October Revolution in Jazz at the Cellar Café in Manhattan, which ...

13
Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited

Read "Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited" reviewed by Chris May


This story has been revisited before, in the context of an Albert Ayler review, but good stories bear repeating, particularly when they are instructive ones. So here it is again... During a May 2021 interview with All About Jazz, the reed player Shabaka Hutchings was asked to name six albums which had made a more than usually deep impression on him. One of those Hutchings chose was Cecil Taylor's Silent Tongues: Live At Montreux '74 (Freedom, 1975). “This ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited

Read "Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala


La pubblicazione di Mixed To Unit Structures, nella meritevole collana Revisited Series della Ezz-thetics, sotto-etichetta della svizzera Hat Hut, riunisce due date di registrazione importanti nella vicenda di Cecil Taylor, distribuite tra l'ottobre 1961 e il maggio 1966. La prima, composta dai tre brani “Pots," “Bulbs" e “Mixed," era stata pubblicata dall'etichetta Impulse! nel disco Into the Hot, a nome di Gil Evans. I successivi quattro pezzi costituivano il disco Unit Structures, siglato originariamente da Blue Note. ...

3
Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Mixed To Unit Structures Revisited

Read "Mixed To Unit Structures Revisited" reviewed by Mark Corroto


A listener could make it their life's work to absorb and appreciate the music the music of Cecil Taylor. One could possibly approach it as a scholar and musician through notation and transcription—not the recommended approach. Such a task would be similar to the process of systematizing a DNA sequence. Taylor's music, and pardon this analogy, might be best grasped as one might attend to the oxymoronic genre noise music. If you are still reading, allow an explanation. ...

74
Album Review

Makanda Ken McIntyre: In the Wind

Read "In the Wind" reviewed by Rex  Butters


In the Wind adds a much-needed title to the sadly thin discography of tireless educator, wind master, innovator, composer, and African American music activist Makanda Ken McIntyre. The late McIntyre counted several remarkable classics among his recorded works, including Cecil Taylor's Unit Structures, performances with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, Beaver Harris, and an appearance on Sam Rivers/Alan Douglas' hugely influential Wildflowers collection, as well as his own sought-after Chasing the Sun and Open Horizon, but he devoted his life ...

165
Album Review

Makanda Ken McIntyre: In The Wind: The Woodwind Quartets

Read "In The Wind: The Woodwind Quartets" reviewed by Kurt Gottschalk


In his final years, multi-reedist Makanda Ken McIntyre was fond of saying in concert that a piece was off his last album, which came out more than twenty years prior. He would laugh, but the joke pointed out how criminally underdocumented he was during his life. In June 2001, that industry oversight was finally corrected with the release of A New Beginning , a bitterly ironic title since he died the same month. McIntyre's associations were few, which ...

153
Album Review

Makanda Ken McIntyre: In The Wind: The Woodwind Quartets

Read "In The Wind: The Woodwind Quartets" reviewed by Jerry D'Souza


Makanda Ken McIntyre left behind a wealth of music, some of which appears on this recording. He was an innovator and, if memory need be jogged, this release serves to accomplish that in no uncertain terms. Recorded in 1995 and 1996, McIntyre transformed the music here by overdubbing instruments. That in itself may not mean much, but what makes this compelling is that by turning them into quartet woodwind combinations, he underlined the cogency and the measure of his imagination.

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95

Event

Makanda Ken McIntyre Project to perform in Newburyport, MA

Makanda Ken McIntyre Project to perform in Newburyport, MA

Source: All About Jazz

On Saturday, November 12, at 7:30 pm, the Makanda Project will present a concert at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, Ma. The Firehouse is located at One Market Square. Tickets are available at the door or by calling 978-462-7336. The Makanda Project is a group of nine Boston-area musicians playing unrecorded compositions of the great multi-instrumentalist Makanda Ken McIntyre. When McIntyre died in 2001, he left around 400 such pieces. He had unique talents and conceptions as ...

128

Recording

New Makanda Ken McIntyre CD Coming November 2nd

New Makanda Ken McIntyre CD Coming November 2nd

Source: All About Jazz

MONTCLAIR, NJ -- Passin' Thru Records, in collaboration with the Contemporary African American Music Organization (CAAMO) and Outward Visions, Inc., is proud to announce the November 2nd release of the late multi-instrumentalist/composer/educator Makanda Ken McIntyre's In the Wind: The Woodwind Quartets (Passin' Thru 41220). Recorded in late 1995 and early 1996, this ambitious, posthumously released solo recording features original compositions arranged for four woodwind quartet combinations (flutes, clarinets, saxophones, and double reeds), with McIntyre overdubbing all the parts on 13 ...

Charlie Haden
bass, acoustic
Charlie Parker
saxophone, alto

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Mixed to Unit...

Ezz-thetics
2021

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In The Wind: The...

Passin' Thru Records
2005

buy

In the Wind

Passin' Thru Records
2005

buy

In the Wind: The...

Passin' Thru Records
2004

buy

In The Wind

Passin' Thru Records
2004

buy

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