Saxophonist/guitarist/composer/music historian/ provocateur Allen Lowe spans the history of jazz in his music in a way that few besides Jaki Byard, Beaver Harris, Steven Bernstein, and Air have ever done, intertwining blues, early jazz, bebop, and the avant-garde. A prolific composer who was incorporating American roots music into his jazz decades before it was hip, he has led project bands featuring a broad array of jazz greats ranging from Doc Cheatham, Randy Sandke, Joe Albany, Don Byron, Ken Peplowski, and Percy France to Matthew Shipp, Julius Hemphill, Marc Ribot, Roswell Rudd, David Murray, Gary Bartz, Nels Cline, Ray Anderson, DJ Logic, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, and Hamiet Bluiett. With two notable but out-of-print exceptions, most of his work has been released on his own Constant Sorrow label. ESP-Disk has long admired his work and is happy to partner with him on the career-spanning "An Avant Garde Of Our Own: Disconnected Works 1980-2018", which consists of four CDs (3-6) of previously unreleased material and four thematically arranged CDs (1-2, 7-8) collecting a wide variety of material that was mostly previously -- but not widely -- available.

"Through no fault of his own, Allen Lowe has become jazz's quintessential outsider artist." (Francis Davis)

"I'm a big fan of Allen Lowe and I think as a musician and a scholar he is very important and I think he is deeply misunderstood because he doesn't hate himself." (Anthony Braxton)

"Angular, sly and funky, Lowe's CD is a bona fide wake up call from the avant garde." (Jonathan Lethem)

"This boxed set is Lowe's magnum opus and then some... It's far ranging, as might be expected, outside and decidedly in. ... 'March of the Vipers' captures Lowe and Hemphill funky and in sync at the Knitting Factory in 1991..." (Jim Motavalli, New York City Jazz Record)