A master at orchestrating his compositions for small chamber ensembles, Marcus Allen favors a diluted impressionism, the subtle filigree of timbres and chords, and paradisiacal, ecstatic atmospheres. Even in purely solo works, his serene and contemplative music remains distant from the grandeur of Winston’s romantic fantasias. Allen encloses himself in a world of colors and scents, bucolic scenes, and breathtaking landscapes.

Marcus Allen, Bobbin Zahner, and Peter DuPont released Eveningsong (1978). Marcus Allen and Summer Raven released Seeds – Hymns For A New Age (1978).

Allen debuted with an album, Breathe (1980), accompanied only by the vibraphone and electric piano of John Bernoff (aka Sky Canyon). The album was actually the product of a progressive-rock ensemble formed by the three in Berkeley.

His delicate chamber-orchestra poems found their proper dimension in the subsequent Petals (1981), with Teja Bell on guitar, Dallas Smith on lyricon, and Jon Bernoff on vibraphone. The quartet sculpts delicate harmonies that slowly develop through crystalline touches and languid phrases. Each “piece” is a slow-motion cascade of emotions filtered through a prism, a chromatic drizzle of timbres and chords. The music, sometimes paradisiacal and ecstatic in the vein of Kitaro (Baby Rainbow), sometimes floating and disjointed like in a psychedelic trip (Sky Flowers), serves to reconcile the listener with the wonders of nature.

The melodic apex of the album is Fables, in which the lyricon intones a catchy refrain. However, the key piece is Petals, a long impressionist fantasia of heartfelt lyricism, where Allen’s pseudo-jazz practice is sublimated: he does not develop themes but instead improvises clusters of consonant chords. The effect is dreamy and cosmic.

Quiet Moments, on the other hand, is an entirely solo work by Allen. Serene and contemplative like never before, the music indulges in simpler, more linear melodies, reducing the free jazz-influenced improvisations. Allen remains more introspective and delicate than Winston: far from the lofty epic of grand romantic fantasias in vogue at the time, he encloses himself in an ecological niche of magical and gentle nature, colors and scents, bucolic scenes, and relaxing vistas. Allen does not seek to explain the mysteries of nature; he merely accompanies them with sounds that live in symbiosis with them.

The result is a sound that is less iridescent and less optimistic, taking the theme of cosmic pain as its underlying motif. At times, his lyricism risks lapsing into the pathetic (One and Eleven, the two longest compositions) or suffocating in cocktail-lounge melancholy (Two, Nine); in other passages, Allen paints almost furious visions of the human condition (Four, Ten).

Solo Flight, the album of maturity, builds on the abstract architectures of its predecessor in more focused melodic sketches, from the poignant A Love Song to the solemn The Little Ballerina's Dream (the two most famous themes of his repertoire), from the dramatic Memories Of Satie to the tender Lullaby, so perfect that they recall the mechanical refrains of music boxes. The title track, flowing and majestic, uses the language of that fresh and effervescent melodicism to revisit, in a more robust way, the metaphysical anguish of Petals and Eleven.

Leaving behind Teja Bell’s chromatic jazz, in this album Allen blends the light, relaxing harmonies of New Age with the passion and abandon of 19th-century Romantic music.

Allen is the tragic poet of New Age Music, its Schumann more than its Chopin.

He later devoted himself to narrative and poetry.