Music Monday: Marshall Allen and Thurston Moore

Ordinarily I post music on Music Mondays, but today I’m going post a photo instead. On Saturday, my buddy Kostis Kourelis and I embarked on an epic tour of Philadelphia. The culmination of this tour was a visit to the historic headquarters of Sun Ra’s Arkestra in the Germantown neighborhood.

As we stopped to take the obligatory photo of Marshall Allen’s house there where Sun Ra and the Arkestra. While we were doing that, we noticed an older man slowly walking down the sidewalk toward us. It happened to be none other than Marshall Allen himself.

Mr. Allen was gracious and friend and allowed me and Kostis to snap a photo with him with his house in the background. He seemed particularly pleased that I had enjoyed his very recent album, New Dawn (2025) which you can get here.

Later that night, we went and heard Thurston Moore perform in a trio with William Winant and Tom Surgal. Winant and Surgal are percussionists whose work tends toward free and improvised music. Thurston Moore is a guitarist. Their work as a trio was predictably percussive with Moore providing whaling, screeching, and surging guitars. The highlight of the evening was Winant’s performance on balloon! 

Someone recorded the show on Saturday and posted it to YouTube: