Marshall Allen (Live)

8.00pm

In 1958, 34-year-old saxophonist Marshall Belford Allen joined the mighty reed section of a wildly unorthodox Chicago free jazz big band led by one Herman Poole Bolunt, a musician who'd recently re-christened himself Sun Ra and who had claimed to have been transported to the planet Venus as a youth.

Allen must have believed him, for, 51 years later, he's still in the band.

Over those intervening decades Allen, always Ra's principal featured soloist, has been roundly feted for his wild, pyrotechnical improvisations on the alto, reserving his considerable chops almost exclusively for the sprawling, be-robed, cosmic free jazz cabal that was and is the Sun Ra Arkestra. Indeed, Allen has fronted the ensemble since the eponymous leader's demise in 1993 (a hell of an act to follow, frankly) and even cut two Arkestra albums as band leader.

Now 85, but showing no signs of slowing down, he is in town tonight at Dalston's bijou but lovely Cafe Oto for a rare solo show. It's an opportunity to get up close and personal with an avant-jazz legend and one of the most influential saxophonists of the last 50 years.