Biography
Over the course of his lifetime the avant-garde tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe shifted from an unrestrained, free-blowing player with a fat tone and high energy to a versatile improviser of many hues, yet he stayed largely underground for the bulk of his career. Emerging during the peak years of avant-garde and free jazz, Lowe projected a forceful, fervent onstage and recorded presence. A deeply intuitive improviser, he displayed the range of his skills across sessions such as the 1973 date Black Beings, which included Joseph Jarman and William Parker, the 1977 album The Other Side taped by Jef Gilson and featuring Lawrence “Butch” Morris, and Lowe & Behold, an eleven-musician ensemble date with Eugene Chadbourne, John Zorn, Morris, and Joseph Bowie. Beyond his own projects, his astute contributions to Billy Bang’s ensembles between 1979 and 2003 introduced his work to a larger listenership. The year before his death he released the striking Lowe-Down & Blue, which featured drummer Michael Carvin, guitarist Bern Nix, and bassist Dominic Duval and delivered robust yet lyrical readings of material by Willie Nelson (“Crazy”), Grachan Moncur III, and Lee Morgan. Most of his eighteen leader dates, among them The Flam (1973, ESP), Decision in Paradise (1985, Soul Note), After the Demon’s Leaving with drummer Denis Charles and bassist Bernard Santacruz (1997, AA Records), and the 1973 duet album Duo Exchange with Rashied Ali, have been reissued in the twenty-first century.
Born in Memphis in 1943, Lowe took up the tenor saxophone at age twelve, attended the San Francisco Conservatory, and relocated to New York in the mid-1960s amid the height of the New Thing. He worked with Sun Ra from 1966 to 1968 and appeared on early-1970s recordings with Alice Coltrane (World Galaxy), Noah Howard (Live at the Village Vanguard), and Rashied Ali, the latter partnership yielding the 1973 duet album Duo Exchange. As a leader he made his debut in 1973 with the ESP-label eruption Black Beings, again featuring Joseph Jarman; its successor Fresh came out on Arista/Freedom. During this period he performed with Don Cherry on such landmark world-fusion statements as Relativity Suite and Brown Rice. Shortly after cutting The Flam for Black Saint in 1975, Lowe spent roughly a year in Paris and thereafter returned to Europe often. His recordings grew more varied in the late 1970s and early 1980s: Don’t Punk Out was a duo with guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, Lowe and Behold employed an eleven-piece orchestra, and Skizoke proved a surprisingly understated straight-ahead session. He also began a lengthy partnership with violinist Billy Bang in the late 1970s, frequently appearing with the Jazz Doctors. After the early 1980s Lowe recorded infrequently for a stretch, resurfacing in 1991 with Inappropriate Choices and a four-reed group called the Saxemple. The ensemble soon expanded to six reeds and was rechristened SaxEmble for its self-titled 1995 debut. Meanwhile he produced several highly satisfying albums for CIMP, including 1995’s Bodies and Soul and 1997’s Vision Blue, and he recorded with Joe McPhee in 1996. In 2000 he issued Short Takes, a set of duets with bassist Bernard Santacruz, for the French Bleu Regard label. Lowe battled cancer for several years yet continued to record, appearing on Billy Bang’s Vietnam: The Aftermath (2001) and Jayne Cortez’s Borders of Disorderly Time (2003) as well as another CIMP leader date, Lowe-Down & Blue (2003). That CIMP album proved his final release; Frank Lowe died quietly at his New York home on September 19, 2003, at the age of sixty. Numerous recordings saw reissue after his passing, but one additional session, billed “Billy Bang featuring Frank Lowe” and titled Above & Beyond: An Evening in Grand Rapids, taped a few months before the saxophonist’s death, stands as his last documented appearance. ESP also brought out The Loweski in 2012; the thirty-seven-minute collection drew from the 1973 Black Beings sessions. In 2020 Rashied Ali’s Survival label was revived, one of its initial releases being a remastered edition of the duo album Duo Exchange.
Born in Memphis in 1943, Lowe took up the tenor saxophone at age twelve, attended the San Francisco Conservatory, and relocated to New York in the mid-1960s amid the height of the New Thing. He worked with Sun Ra from 1966 to 1968 and appeared on early-1970s recordings with Alice Coltrane (World Galaxy), Noah Howard (Live at the Village Vanguard), and Rashied Ali, the latter partnership yielding the 1973 duet album Duo Exchange. As a leader he made his debut in 1973 with the ESP-label eruption Black Beings, again featuring Joseph Jarman; its successor Fresh came out on Arista/Freedom. During this period he performed with Don Cherry on such landmark world-fusion statements as Relativity Suite and Brown Rice. Shortly after cutting The Flam for Black Saint in 1975, Lowe spent roughly a year in Paris and thereafter returned to Europe often. His recordings grew more varied in the late 1970s and early 1980s: Don’t Punk Out was a duo with guitarist Eugene Chadbourne, Lowe and Behold employed an eleven-piece orchestra, and Skizoke proved a surprisingly understated straight-ahead session. He also began a lengthy partnership with violinist Billy Bang in the late 1970s, frequently appearing with the Jazz Doctors. After the early 1980s Lowe recorded infrequently for a stretch, resurfacing in 1991 with Inappropriate Choices and a four-reed group called the Saxemple. The ensemble soon expanded to six reeds and was rechristened SaxEmble for its self-titled 1995 debut. Meanwhile he produced several highly satisfying albums for CIMP, including 1995’s Bodies and Soul and 1997’s Vision Blue, and he recorded with Joe McPhee in 1996. In 2000 he issued Short Takes, a set of duets with bassist Bernard Santacruz, for the French Bleu Regard label. Lowe battled cancer for several years yet continued to record, appearing on Billy Bang’s Vietnam: The Aftermath (2001) and Jayne Cortez’s Borders of Disorderly Time (2003) as well as another CIMP leader date, Lowe-Down & Blue (2003). That CIMP album proved his final release; Frank Lowe died quietly at his New York home on September 19, 2003, at the age of sixty. Numerous recordings saw reissue after his passing, but one additional session, billed “Billy Bang featuring Frank Lowe” and titled Above & Beyond: An Evening in Grand Rapids, taped a few months before the saxophonist’s death, stands as his last documented appearance. ESP also brought out The Loweski in 2012; the thirty-seven-minute collection drew from the 1973 Black Beings sessions. In 2020 Rashied Ali’s Survival label was revived, one of its initial releases being a remastered edition of the duo album Duo Exchange.
Albums
Singles
