Archie Shepp is a jazz multi-instrumentalist who is best known for his band leadership and saxophone playing. Shepp truly was a key figure in the development of the avant-garde, fusion styles of jazz which moved the music on from its Bebop Golden Age in the 1940s and 1950s. Influenced by African, African-American and Latin musical styles, Shepp's reputation was so impressive that he was able to collaborate with such superstars of the new jazz direction developed in the late 1950s, the '60s and the 1970s as John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Sun Ra.
As well as being a primary innovator, Shepp is also an educator having taken up the roles of lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and as a professor of African-American Studies at SUNY in Buffalo, New York. Shepp's vast discography runs through the musical and political histories of his home nation as well as that of Hungary, Africa and Latin America. He continues to perform in the United States, Europe and around the world.
