A web search led me to Albert Ayler. roar, tremor When A palpable thirst for transcendence He has become an icon for generations of free-thinking tenors. Amba quickly identified not only with his music, but with the resistance he faced in his home.
she heard interview Ayler remembers practicing the saxophone at his parents’ house. When he came downstairs his mother said to him, I think they made a mistake in the hospital,” she said, and he just cried and felt like people didn’t accept me.” understood.”
After high school, Amba attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where her loyalty to free jazz put her at odds with her teachers. “I love straight ahead,” she said of mainstream jazz. “But unfortunately it’s not my heart song.” Two years later, she dropped out.
Growing up, Amba was strongly attracted to religion, but Christian absolutism alienated her.In San Francisco, a fellow musician gave her a book on Advaita Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta is a tradition that accepts all faiths as equally valid. “Once I found it, everything in my life was a huge turning point,” she said.
She dropped out of the conservatory and spent time at the Vedanta Center on the West Coast. Within her community she was given the name ‘Amba’ which means her mother in Sanskrit. She moved back to Tennessee, but in the fall of 2020, after being invited by a mutual acquaintance, she drove all day from Kingsport to Harlem to meet David her Murray and eventually study with him. Did. A master her saxophonist who has harmonized her tenor’s entire history, from swing to free, in her highly prolific career.