Alan Silva

Alan Silva (born Alan Treadwell da Silva, Bermuda, January 22, 1939) is an American free jazz double bassist and keyboard player.

Biography
Silva was born a British subject to an Azorean/Portuguese mother, Irene da Silva, and a black Bermudian father known only as "Ruby". At the very height of racial segregation in the United States, Silva emigrated to the United States at the age of five with his mother, eventually acquiring U.S. citizenship by the age of 18 or 19. He adopted the stage name of Alan Silva in his twenties.

Silva was quoted in a Bermudan newspaper in 1988 as saying that although he left the island at a young age, he always considered himself Bermudian. He was raised in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, where he first began studying the trumpet, and moved on to study the upright bass.

Silva is known as one of the most inventive bass players in jazz and has performed with many of the great names in the world of avant-garde jazz, including Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Sunny Murray, and Archie Shepp.

Silva performed in 1964's October Revolution as a pioneer in the free jazz movement, and for Ayler's Live in Greenwich Village album. He has lived mainly in Paris since the early 1970s, where he formed the Celestrial Communication Orchestra, a group dedicated to the performance of free jazz with various instrumental combinations. In the 1990s he picked up the electronic keyboard, declaring that his bass playing no longer surprised him. He has also used the electric violin and electric sarangi on his recordings.

Since around 2000 he has performed more frequently as a bassist and bandleader, notably at New York City's annual Vision Festivals.

As leader

 * Luna Surface (Alan Silva and The Celestrial Communication Orchestra) (BYG Actuel)
 * Seasons (Alan Silva and The Celestrial Communication Orchestra) (BYG Actuel)
 * My Country (Leo)
 * Skillfullness (ESP Disk)
 * Inner Song (Center of the World)
 * In Situ (as "Take Some Risks", Adda)
 * The Shout / Portrait from a Small Woman (Sun Records)
 * Inner Song (Center of the World)

As sideman
with Albert Ayler with Sun Ra with Cecil Taylor with Sunny Murray with Shipen Lebzelter'' with Archie Shepp with Grachan Moncur III with Dave Burrell with Jimmy Lyons with Francois Tusques with Frank Wright with Bobby Few with Bill Dixon with Franz Koglmann with Andrew Hill with the Globe Unity Orchestra with Abdelhai Bennani with Itaru Oki
 * Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village (Impulse!)
 * Love Cry (Impulse!)
 * Sun Ra-Featuring Pharoah Sanders and Black Harold (Saturn)
 * Nuit de la Fondation Maeght Vol. 1 (Shandar)
 * Nuit de la Fondation Maeght Vol. 2 (Shandar)
 * It's After the End of the World (MPS/BASF)
 * Out In Space (MPS)
 * Unit Structures (Blue Note)
 * Conquistador! (Blue Note)
 * Soundtrack Ferrari (CBS/Sony)
 * It is in the Brewing Luminous (hat Hut)
 * Sunny Murray (ESP Disk)
 * Big Chief (Pathe)
 * Hommage to Africa (BYG Actuel)
 * Sunshine (BYG Actuel)
 * Aigu-Grave (Marge)
 * Firmanence w/ Burton Greene (Fore)
 * Rock and Other Four Letter Words (Columbia)
 * Live at the Pan-African Festival (BYG Actuel)
 * Poem for Malcolm (BYG Actuel)
 * New Africa (BYG Actuel)
 * Echo (BYG Actuel)
 * After Love (America)
 * Other Afternoons (BYG Actuel)
 * Intercommunal Music (Shandar)
 * Center of the World (Center of the World)
 * Last Polka in Nancy? (Center of the World)
 * Solos & Duets w/ Bobby Few (Sun Records)
 * More Or Less Few (Center of the World)
 * Rhapsody in Few (Black Saint)
 * Solos & Duets w/ Frank Wright (Sun Records)
 * Considerations 1 (Fore)
 * Bill Dixon In Italy, Volume One (Soul Note)
 * Bill Dixon In Italy, Volume Two (Soul Note)
 * November 1981 (Soul Note)
 * Opium For Franz (Pipe)
 * Strange Serenade (Soul Note)
 * Intergalactic Blow (JAPO)
 * Enfance (Marge)
 * Entrelacs (Tampon Ramier)
 * Paris-Ohraï (Ohraï)

Filmography

 * 2001 - Inside Out in the Open (2001). Directed by Alan Roth.  Asymmetric Pictures.  Distributed by Third World Newsreel.