Marion Brown (1931 to 2010) was an American alto saxophonist, composer, writer, visual artist and ethnomusicologist, an enigmatic figure of the 1960s and 1970s avant-garde who balanced the cerebral with the spiritual. He arrived in New York from Georgia and was quickly at the centre of the new music, playing on John Coltrane's Ascension (1965) and alongside Archie Shepp and John Tchicai. His own records moved from the fierce free jazz of Three for Shepp towards the pastoral, impressionist suites of Afternoon of a Georgia Faun (1970) and the Georgia trilogy, drawing on the sounds and memories of the rural South.

Marion Brown (1931 to 2010) was an American alto saxophonist, composer, writer, visual artist and ethnomusicologist, an enigmatic figure of the 1960s and 1970s avant-garde who balanced the cerebral with the spiritual. He arrived in New York from Georgia and was quickly at the centre of the new music, playing on John Coltrane's Ascension (1965) and alongside Archie Shepp and John Tchicai. His own records moved from the fierce free jazz of Three for Shepp towards the pastoral, impressionist suites of Afternoon of a Georgia Faun (1970) and the Georgia trilogy, drawing on the sounds and memories of the rural South.