Creative Freedom: A Salon Experience featuring Marshall Allen, Salvador Jimenez Flores and Jamaaladeen Tacuma

Third Way Cultural Alliance and Grounds For Sculpture develop new, intimate presentations of art and music.

Third Way Cultural Alliance and Grounds For Sculpture announce the first of annual events designed to bring music, art, and community together. These unique events discard traditional definitions of how we experience art and music, and seek to build seamless community gatherings to experience both in a more inclusive way. Third Way, through their unique model of music-as-art patronage, brings unheard music to each event. Music that is not available in any media or platform, performed live by the artists, with discussion of the album creation during the event. Each album is paired with a visual artist, who will also discuss their creative process. This new format elevates the music and the art, yet simultaneously brings both to ground level, where the separation between musician and listener, artist and viewer, is removed. In this way the true intent of the art is fulfilled.

The inaugural event takes place on July 18, 2026:

Grounds For Sculpture invites you to share a unique evening featuring new music from the legendary Marshall Allen (Sun Ra Arkestra) and avant-garde bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma alongside the powerful full mural art of Salvador Jimenez Flores. The evening takes place within Flores’ exhibition in the East Gallery and offers an intimate experience soaking in new work, performed for the first time from Allen’s unreleased album titled 101: An Audio Odyssey, and engaging with the creatives (musicians and visual artists) in an intimate conversation on the theme of artistic freedom. Music will be performed, but his is not a traditional music performance. This is a creative experience crafted to ground us in the importance of preserving creative freedom while we take in the art and music within community. The evening will be moderated by accomplished radio presenter and educator Nicole Sweeney (WRTI). Brought to you by Third Way Cultural Alliance in partnership with Grounds For Sculpture.

Exclusive first copies of 101: An Audio Odyssey are available to attendees.

“Sun Ra inspires me because he showed that imagination can be a radical act of liberation. His way of blending myth, history, and futurism resonates with my own Rasquache-Futuristic approach, where I use resourcefulness, cultural memory, and hybrid forms to imagine new futures for marginalized communities. Like Sun Ra, I draw from ancestral stories to create work that defies borders and reclaims dignity, possibility, and belonging. It will be an honor to be in conversation with Marshall Allen and chat about creative freedom and improvisation. The mural at GFS was a good example of that. I had some ideas for what the mural was going to be like but there were a lot of improvisations and reactions to our times.” (Salvador Jimenes Flores)

Guests have access to the gardens prior to the evening event. Cash bar and lounge vibe.

Price: Member $60; General $70; Student $15; CD pre-purchase $20

No cameras, or recordings allowed at this event.

Partners:

Third Way Cultural Alliance, founded by Louis Marks, Fabian Brown, and Joe Pignato, is dedicated to supporting intelligent contemporary music as art. Third Way is preserving the album as the primary format of musical expression, and supporting socially conscious projects of power and meaning. Third Way has funded the creation of 101: An Audio Odyssey, which will be subsequently released on July 25 via Ropeadope Records.

Grounds For Sculpture is a 42-acre sculpture park, museum, and arboretum founded on the site of the former New Jersey State Fairgrounds. GFS combines art and beckoning spaces to welcome, surprise and engage all visitors in the artist’s act of invention.