Shannon J. Effinger (Shannon Ali) has been a freelance arts journalist for more than a decade. Her writing on all things jazz and music regularly appears in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Village Voice, Bandcamp, Pitchfork, Jazziz and NPR Music. She made her cinematic debut as a featured critic in the documentary “Universe,” the rediscovered orchestral suite by Wayne Shorter, written more than 50 years ago for Miles Davis and left unrecorded and largely untouched until it was revisited by Davis’ protégé, the late trumpeter Wallace Roney. A native New Yorker, she currently resides and writes in Harlem.