AS OF JANUARY 13, 2023 FIVE HUNDRED MUSICAL ARTISTS HAVE BEEN FEATURED IN THE SOUND PROJECTIONS MAGAZINE THAT BEGAN ITS ONLINE PUBLICATION ON NOVEMBER 1, 2014.
ACCESS TO EACH ARTIST CAN BE FOUND IN THE 'BLOG ARCHIVE' (ARTISTS LISTED IN WEEKLY CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER) AND IN THE ‘LABELS’ SECTION
(ARTIST NAMES, TOPICS, ETC.) ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. CLICK
ON THESE RESPECTIVE LINKS TO ACCESS THEIR CONTENT:
https://soundprojections.blogspot.com/
PHOTO: GERI ALLEN (1957-2017)
.jpg)
Geri Allen
(1957-2017)
Biography by Chris Kelsey
Geri Allen was the quintessence of what a modern-day mainstream jazz pianist should be. Well-versed in a variety of modern jazz styles from bop to free, Allen steered a middle course in her own music, speaking in a cultivated and moderately distinctive voice, respectful of, but not overly impressed with, the doctrine of conservatism that often rules the mainstream scene. There was little conceptually that separated her from her most obvious models -- Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, and Bill Evans primary among them -- yet Allen played with a spontaneity and melodic gift that greatly transcended rote imitation. Her improvisational style was at various times both spacious and dense, rubato and swinging, blithe and percussive. It was a genuinely expressive, personal voice; her music was an amalgam -- honestly conceived, intelligently accessible, and well within the bounds of what was popularly expected from a jazz musician of her generation.
Allen received her early jazz education at the famed Cass Technical High School in Detroit, where her mentor was the highly regarded trumpeter/teacher Marcus Belgrave. In 1979, Allen earned her bachelor's degree in jazz studies from Howard University in Washington, D.C. After graduation, she moved to New York City, where she studied with the veteran bop pianist Kenny Barron. From there, at the behest of the jazz educator Nathan Davis, Allen attended the University of Pittsburgh, earning a master's degree in ethnomusicology, returning to New York in 1982. In the mid-'80s, Allen formed an association with the Brooklyn "M-Base" crowd that surrounded alto saxophonist Steve Coleman. Allen played on several of Coleman's albums, including his first, 1985's Motherland Pulse. Allen's own first album, The Printmakers, with Anthony Cox and Andrew Cyrille, from a year earlier, showcased the pianist's more avant-garde tendencies.
In 1988 came perhaps her first mature group statement, Etudes, a cooperative trio effort with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian -- Allen's loose-limbed lyricism and off-center linearity were perfectly complemented by the innate tunefulness of bassist Haden and the unerring timbral sense of drummer Motian. In the '90s, Allen signed first with Blue Note, then Verve. Her subsequent records placed her in ever more conventional contexts, supported by the cream of the mainstream "Young Lions" crop. As a soloist, however, Allen continued to push the improvisational envelope, as evidenced by Sound Museum, a 1996 recording made under the leadership of Ornette Coleman. The solo Gathering followed in 1998. Allen was named the top Talent Deserving Wider Recognition among pianists in the 1993 and 1994 Down Beat magazine critics' polls. Her significant collaborators included saxophonists Oliver Lake, Arthur Blythe, and Julius Hemphill, trumpeter Lester Bowie, and singer Betty Carter.
At the start of the 21st century, Allen recorded Live at the Village Vanguard with Motian and Haden for the Japanese DIW imprint. She followed it with another label change in 2004 when she moved to Telarc for Life of a Song with bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette. She remained on the label for 2006's Timeless Portraits and Dreams, a collection of spirituals, gospel songs, and bebop tunes. Her rhythm section for the date included bassist Ron Carter and drummer Jimmy Cobb, with trumpeter Wallace Roney appearing on a version of Charlie Parker's "Au-Leu-Cha." Allen not only changed labels again in 2009, but her standard piano trio configuration as well. Three Pianos for Jimi, on Douglas Records, is a tribute to legendary rock guitarist Hendrix. It was recorded with two other pianists -- brothers Mark and Scott Batson -- and featured no other instrumentation.
Allen, who also served as an associate professor of
music at the University of Michigan, recorded her solo piano work Flying Toward the Sound, which celebrated the contributions and influence of Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, and Herbie Hancock, in 2009. It was released on the Motéma imprint in 2010. In 2011, Allen released the Christmas-themed A Child Is Born, featuring a mix of traditional carols, hymns, and some original songs. In 2012, she issued Secret of the Wind, on Outnote, a duet album with vocalist Elisabeth Kontomanou. Allen revisited the sounds of her hometown on 2013's Grand River Crossings: Motown & Motor City Inspirations. Geri Allen died of complications from cancer on June 27, 2017, two weeks after her 60th birthday.
Geri Allen To Receive Berklee Honor
Geri Allen is a pianist, composer, educator, and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient. Over her expansive career, the Detroit native released nearly 20 albums as a leader, and worked with Ornette Coleman, Betty Carter, Tony Williams, Ron Carter, Ravi Coltrane, Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, Marcus Belgrave, Jimmy Cobb, Charlie Haden, and Paul Motion. The first recipient of the Soul Train Lady of Soul Award for jazz, Allen was also the first woman and youngest ever recipient of the Danish Jazzpar Prize. Her work has been featured in the Peabody-winning film Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, on Carrington's Grammy-winning album The Mosaic Project, and Andy Bey's Grammy-nominated album American Song. She was recently commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra to compose a piece to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. In 2013, Allen returned to her alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh, to serve as director of jazz studies. She continues to tour with the Geri Allen Trio and her tap quartet, Timeline.
http://www.gf.org/fellows/211-geri-allen
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation: Fellowships to Assist Research and Artistic Creation
2008 - US & Canada Competition
Creative Arts - Music Composition
http://geriallen.com
BIO
Born in 1957 in Pontiac, Michigan, Geri Allen was reared in Detroit, the home of Motown and such jazzmen extraordinaire as Thad, Elvin, and Hank Jones, Barry Harris, and more recently Ron Carter, Yusef Lateef, and James Carter. Encouraged by her parents, Ms. Allen began studying piano at the age of seven, attended the acclaimed magnet school for music Cass Technical High School, and took advantage of one-on-one tutorials at the Jazz Development Workshop. There she was guided by trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, drummer Roy Brooks, and saxophonist Donald Walden. In Detroit she studied everything from classical music, to jazz, to Motown hits--even madrigals.
After receiving a B.A. in jazz studies and piano from Howard University and an M.A. in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh, Ms. Allen moved to New York in 1982 where she quickly established herself. A charter member of the M-Base Collective and the Black Rock Coalition, she became known as a strong new presence on the New York jazz scene. She was invited to perform and record with Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Dewey Redman, Oliver Lake, and Betty Carter. One of her most memorable collaborations was with Ornette Coleman, one of the indisputable inventors of free jazz. In 1992, he invited her to record with him, only the second time he'd recorded with a pianist, the previous time being thirty-five years earlier. The resulting sessions produced Sound Museum, a two-volume CD consisting of "Three Women" and "Hidden Man." She also performs and collaborates with her husband, jazz master Wallace Roney.
Her own recordings include Twenty One, Eyes. . . in the Back of Your Head, Maroons (all on the Blue Note label), The Gathering (Verve), and, most recently, the ambitious, critically acclaimed double CD Geri Allen: Timeless Portraits and Dreams (Telarc). In his review of that CD, Tavis Smiley, the highly respected African American radio and television host and cultural commentator, raved that "Jazz pianist Geri Allen has take the freedom of Jazz and combined it with the cultural freedom movements that have paralleled the evolution of Jazz itself."
Geri Allen has received numerous commissions, from, among others, Jazz at Lincoln Center (Sister Leola, 1989), the Music Theater Group (Short Takes, 1990), and Stanford University (Of Mounts and Mountains, 2003). The Walt Whitman Arts Center, Meet the Composer, and the Dodge Foundation commissioned For the Healing of the Nations, a sacred jazz work composed as a tribute to the victims and survivors of 9/11, which premiered 10 September 2006. The youngest person and only woman to date to receive the Danish JAZZPAR award (1996), she was asked to compose original music for the award celebration in Copenhagen. The recorded performances were released the following year as Some Aspects of Water (Steeplechase).
Ms. Allen is the musical director of the Mary Lou Williams Collective, and she played the role of Ms. Williams in Robert Altman's celebrated film Jazz 34, Kansas City. She has also composed the score (with Bernice Reagon and Toshi Reagon) for Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, a Peabody Award-winning documentary produced by Lisa Gay Hamilton and Jonathan Demme, which aired on HBO during its Black History Month, and created original orchestrations for the Grammy-nominated American Song by Andy Bey.
During her twenty-five-year professional career, Ms. Allen has been honored more times than it is possible to list, both for her musical accomplishments and her outstanding work as an educator. Spellman College presented her with its African American Classical Music Award, Howard University gave her a Distinguished Alumni Award, and SESAC has given her many awards as well. The Detroit Metro Jazz Festival honored her with a "Geri Allen Day" and Harvard University declared a "Geri Allen Week" during which the mayor of Cambridge gave her the key to the city.
For her Guggenheim Fellowship project, Ms. Allen is composing an original solo piano work, celebrating three of the most important pianist composers/innovators in contemporary jazz: Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, and Herbie Hancock. The piece, entitled Refractions: Flying Toward the Sound, will be recorded on Montema Records; Ms. Allen will be performing this new piano work throughout the 2009 to 2011 concert seasons in major museums and concert settings in the United States and abroad.
Geri Allen is presently Associate Professor of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan.
2014 Berklee Honorary Doctorate Recipient Geri Allen
Geri Allen is considered one of the greatest female piano players of all time, alongside Marian McPartland and Aretha Franklin. She was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, one of the many music capitols in the US. Greats such as Al Green, Stevie Wonder, John Lee Hooker, The White Stripes, and Eminem all came from the Detroit music scene. Detroit is an industrial motor city whose music is defined by the roughness and edge heard in Motown, jazz, hip-hop, and rock.
Geri is a versatile piano player who can be heard playing in any context from bop to free jazz. Some of her greatest inspirations are pianists such as Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans. Aside from being the leader on her own albums, she has collaborated with many jazz greats. Since her first studio date in 1986, Geri’s extensive recording career includes recordings with Wayne Shorter, Wallace Roney, Jack DeJohnette, Ravi Coltrane, and Steve Coleman’s M-base collective.
This version of “Giant Steps,” featuring Betty Carter on vocals, opens very colorfully, with rubato (meaning free tempo). The tune features Geri on piano, Dave Holland on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Geri is playing a lot of open chords, Holland is playing arco style with a bow, and DeJohnette chooses mallets for cymbal washes. At 3:35 , Geri begins her solo and the time goes from free to swing, while Holland starts playing a walking feel. The dynamics drop at where Holland takes a bass solo. At 6:30, Carter takes a scat solo. She is emphasizing a lot on the melody, using a lot of Bs and Ls. At 8:05, the time goes back to the rubato.
4 / 5 stars
(Motema)
This is the album for jazz fans to play at full volume to anybody who says the music can't be danced to any more. Timeline is inspired American pianist Geri Allen's unique two-year-old quartet – unique in that it combines the virtues of the traditional acoustic trio with the explosive percussion input of young New Jersey tapdancing phenomenon Morris Chestnut. Even without the bonus videos on this disc (also viewable at youtube.com/motemamusic) the audience reaction makes the thrill level pretty apparent, and Allen's shrewd choice of material and McCoy Tyner/Herbie Hancock-inspired momentum are the ideal foils for a rhythm celebration, a showcase for Chestnut and drummer Kassa Overall. For all its infectious danceability, though, this music constantly references the jazz tradition – from the tribute to the late drummer Philly Joe Jones in the torrential rainstorm of an opener, to the dark riffs and skidding melodies of McCoy Tyner's Four By Five, and a headlong and then dreamily slinky account of Mal Waldron's Soul Eyes. An Embraceable You/Lover Man medley explores both Allen's wealth of piano-jazz resources and Kenny Davis's warm bass variations, and Charlie Parker's Ah Leu Cha emerges at a jangling gallop out of a martial drums-and-tap tattoo. It barely lets up for a moment.
Review by Don Snowden
What a shame this trio didn't keep working together longer -- the finely honed veteran rhythm section of Charlie Haden and Paul Motian was a match made in heaven for Geri Allen, the most stylistically versatile and creative pianist of her generation. But praise the music gods they managed to record as much as they did, even though Live at the Village Vanguard may not be the best starting point to sample the interaction of this creatively balanced trio. The compositions, split among all three, avoid repetition with studio releases -- but don't expect any fireworks. The opening "Prayer for Peace" is as low-key and moody as the title would suggest, and "Obtuse Angles" seems designed mainly to provide frameworks for brief individual breakdowns. There's an underlying somberness running through "It Should Have Happened a Long Time Ago" and the ruminative "Fiasco" that seems to come from Allen -- her spare playing style generally shows a fondness for the lower and middle registers, so it's not entirely out of musical character. Motian's solo at the end of "Fiasco" starts energizing the music -- if any one member of the trio really shines bright on this disc, it's the drummer. But Allen's pensiveness remains on "In the Year of the Dragon," even as Haden's lines weave countermelodies to her piano at the end. "Vanguard Blues" briefly brings the tempo up before Haden's arco bass imitates underwater whale speech on "Song for the Whales" and Allen's haunting piano melody complements the bassist's mammalian moans. Live at the Village Vanguard is a good CD musically, but there's not much jump-up factor here -- it's moody and very bluesy in feeling if not actual form, almost like chamber jazz at times. The very compressed, muted recorded sound doesn't alleviate the somber aspect of the listening experience any, but jazz is about capturing the moment. And those were the moments, emotional and musical, caught by these three master musicians on those two December nights.
Music Review
Assertive and Soulful Piano, With a Slow Backbeat and a Spirit of Flow
September 7, 2011
New York Times
If every great jazz pianist needs a “Live at the Village Vanguard” album, made with a fine trio, the time is ripe for Geri Allen. True, she already released such an album, for a Japanese label, with two of the best possible partners — the bassist Charlie Haden and the drummer Paul Motian — but that was 20 years ago, and it’s no longer in print. (Look to iTunes for your copy.) A lot can happen to a determined and introspective artist since then.
And Ms. Allen firmly fits that description. She’s working at the Village Vanguard this week with the bassist Kenny Davis and the drummer Jeff (Tain) Watts, and if there are plans to record the engagement — besides the Wednesday-night broadcast and an online video stream coordinated by NPR and WBGO-FM (88.3 in the New York region) — she hasn’t said anything about them. Which means you should hedge your bets and head to the club, where she’ll be through Sunday. What she’s doing there constitutes a vital update.
Her brand of pianism, assertive and soulful, has long suggested a golden mean of major postwar styles. She just as easily deploys the slipstream whimsy of Herbie Hancock, the earthy sweep of McCoy Tyner and the swarming agitation of Cecil Taylor. (Last year Ms. Allen released a solo piano album, “Flying Toward the Sound,” on the Motéma label, naming those three figures as inspiration.) She also seems to have absorbed useful information from Randy Weston and Kenny Barron. But what you hear in her playing isn’t a jumble of influences; she has her own point of view, and she’s clearer about it now than ever.
She was generous with her output during the week’s first set on Tuesday night, which began with a vintage original, “Drummer’s Song.” The tune fulfilled its stated function, becoming the first of several muscular polyrhythmic showcases for Mr. Watts. The framework bracketing his solo, a vamp with a shifting time signature, could have resulted in something jagged and fitful, but the trio made it otherwise, upholding a spirit of flow.
Ms. Allen and Mr. Davis have been working together regularly in recent years; her bond with Mr. Watts, though it goes back quite a few years, hasn’t been reinforced in a while. That may be why he so often kept his eyes trained in her direction, intent on locking into her groove. It could also account for some of the freshness in Tuesday’s set, the intimation of musical relationships being tested and renewed.
Among the eight pieces performed a few fell along the swinging post-bop continuum, including themes by Mr. Watts and the clarinetist Don Byron. Elsewhere came songs that employed an unhurried backbeat: notably a reharmonized version of Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown” and a simmering R&B tune called “Unconditional Love,” from the drummer Terri Lyne Carrington’s new album, on which Ms. Allen appears.
At almost every turn Ms. Allen played with supple authority and unforced restraint, and her band mates followed her lead. Their chemistry is likely only to improve over the next few nights, which is saying something.
The trio performs through Sunday at the Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village; (212) 255-4037, villagevanguard.com.
http://bricartsmedia.org/events/geri-allen-carrie-mae-weems-slow-fade-to-black
Geri Allen & Carrie Mae Weems: Slow Fade To Black
June 15, 2012 · 8:00 PM
CELEBRATE BROOKLYN! @ Prospect Park Bandshell
Doors open at 7:00pm.
With ESPERANZA SPALDING / TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON / LIZZ WRIGHT / PATRICE RUSHEN AND MORE!
The great pianist GERI ALLEN and the world-renowned photographer and video artist CARRIE MAE WEEMS team up for this special world premiere commission. SLOW FADE TO BLACK combines Weems’ arresting projections with an astonishing night of music featuring Allen’s new trio with fellow jazz giants ESPERANZA SPALDING and TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON, her regular group Timeline, LIZZ WRIGHT, PATRICE RUSHEN, the Howard University vocal group AFRO BLUE, the tap dancer MAURICE CHESTNUT, and many surprises. Weems, who has a major three-decade retrospective coming to the Guggenheim Museum in the fall of 2013, explores issues of gender, race, and identity in her work. These themes inform Slow Fade to Black, in which live performance and video will comingle on stage and screen in unimagined ways. The night promises to be unlike anything that has ever happened at Celebrate Brooklyn!, or anywhere else.
2016 Sync Up Conference
Keynote Interview: Geri Allen, The Art of a Career in Jazz
June 12, 1957 – June 27, 2017
Pianist, composer, Guggenheim Fellow, and educator Geri Allen died on Tuesday, June 27, 2017 from complications of cancer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She had recently celebrated her 60th birthday.
Hailed as one of the most accomplished pianists and educators of her time, Allen’s most recent position was as Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She was especially proud of performing with renowned pianist McCoy Tyner for the last two years, and was also part of two recent groundbreaking trios: ACS (Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Esperanza Spalding) and the MAC Power Trio with David Murray and Carrington – their debut recording Perfection was released on Motéma Music in 2016 to critical acclaim.
“The jazz community will never be the same with the loss of one of our geniuses, Geri Allen. Her virtuosity and musicality are unparalleled,” expressed Carrington upon learning of her passing. “I will miss my sister and friend, but I am thankful for all of the music she made and all of the incredible experiences we had together for over 35 years. She is a true original – a one of kind – never to be forgotten. My heart mourns, but my spirit is filled with the gift of having known and learned from Geri Allen.“
She was the first woman and youngest person to receive the Danish Jazzpar Prize, and was the first recipient of the Soul Train Lady of Soul Award for Jazz. In 2011, she was nominated for an NAACP Award for Timeline, her Tap Quartet project. Over the last few years, Allen served as the program director of NJPAC’s All-Female Jazz Residency, which offered a weeklong one-of-a-kind opportunity for young women, ages 14-25, to study jazz.
Allen was also recently honored to be one of the producers of the expanded and re-mastered recording of Erroll Garner’s The Complete Concert by the Sea, which garnered her an Essence Image Award nomination as well as a GRAMMY® Award-nomination in 2016. She felt strongly that students should have access to this material, and went on to organize a 60th anniversary performance of the material at the 2015 Monterey Jazz Festival with Jason Moran and Christian Sands.
Having grown up in Detroit, a region known for its rich musical history, Allen’s affinity for jazz stemmed from her father’s passion for the music. She began taking lessons at 7-years-old, and started her early music education under the mentorship of trumpeter Marcus Belgrave at the Cass Technical High School. In 1979, she was one of the first to graduate from Howard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in jazz studies. It was there that she began to embrace music from all cultures that would ultimately influence her work. During that time, she studied with the great Kenny Barron in New York City.
“I first met Geri when she was a student at Howard. She would take the train up to my house in Brooklyn for lessons. Even then it was apparent that Geri heard some things musically that others did not,” Barron reflects. “In 1994 we performed a duo piano concert at the Caramoor Festival in New York and I realized how fearless she was and at the same time how focused she was. It was a lesson that I took to heart. Geri is not only a great musician, composer and pianist, she is a giant and will be sorely missed.”
In New York, Allen met Nathan Davis, a respected educator who encouraged her to attend the University of Pittsburgh where he served as Director for their Jazz Studies department. She followed his advice and earned her Masters Degree in Ethnomusicology in 1982. In 2013, she became their Director of Jazz Studies upon Davis’ retirement.
While at UPITT, Allen’s commitment to community outreach and bridging educational inequities manifested through her pioneering engagement on the research education network of Internet2 and CENIC, where she connected virtually to universities and cultural institutions across the country, collaborating with artists and technologists such as Terri Lyne Carrington, Chris Chafe, George Lewis, Michael Dressen, Jason Moran, Vijay Iyer and the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars.
She was also the musical director of the Mary Lou Williams Collective, recording and performing the music of the great Mary Lou Williams, including her sacred work Mass For Peace. Allen also collaborated with S. Epatha Merkerson and Farah Jasmine Griffin on two music theatre projects: “Great Apollo Women,” which premiered at the legendary Apollo Theatre, and “A Conversation with Mary Lou,” which premiered at the Harlem Stage as an educational component for the Harlem Stage collaboration. The University of Pittsburgh hosted the first ever Mary Lou Williams Cyber Symposium where Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, and Allen performed a three piano improvisation from Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pittsburgh in real time using Internet2 technology.
Allen was a recent recipient of the Howard University Pinnacle Award presented by Professor Connaitre Miller and Afro Blue. She has served as a faculty member at Howard University, the New England Conservatory, and the University of Michigan where she taught for ten years. In 2014, Allen was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Music Degree by Berklee College of Music in Boston. The Honorable Congressman John Conyers Jr. presented the 2014 Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Jazz Legacy Award to Allen.
In 1985, Allen released The Printmakers – her debut release as a leader, and one of the hundreds of releases that encompasses her boisterous discography. In 1990, she signed to Blue Note Records and released The Nurturer with mentor Marcus Belgrave, Kenny Garrett, Robert Hurst, Jeff “Tain” Watts and Eli Fountain. This release showcased a more conventional playing style while still maintaining the freedom of improvisation and expression that was so present at the start of her career.
Throughout the late ‘90s and early 2000s, Allen continued to be a pioneer for the genre both as a side-woman and as a leader. Her improvisational virtuosity was displayed on Ornette Coleman’s 1996 release of Sound Museum, her 1988 release The Gathering, and again in 2004 with The Life a Song featuring Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette. In 2010 her solo piano album, Flying Towards the Sound was critically acclaimed and was rated “Best of 2010” on NPR and DownBeat magazine’s Critics Polls.
Allen’s commissioned work “For the Healing of the Nations” in 2006 was written to pay tribute to the victims, survivors, and family members of the September 11th attacks. This special tribute was performed by the Howard University’s Afro Blue Jazz Choir and included performances from jazz musicians such as Oliver Lake, Craig Harris, Andy Bey, among others. It was also around this time that Allen had been awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship honoring her prolific role in furthering this creative art form. This allowed her to release the compositions “Refractions” and “Flying Towards the Sound,” as well as three short films under the Motéma Music label.
In 2008, Allen received the African American Classical Music Award from the Women of the New Jersey chapter of Spelman College as well as “A Salute to African-American Women: Phenomenal Woman” from the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, Epsilon chapter at the University of Michigan. Allen also performed in a theatrical and musical celebration honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the statue unveiling in Washington, DC.
In a career that spanned more than 35 years, she recorded, performed and collaborated with some of the most important artists of our time including Ornette Coleman, Ravi Coltrane, George Shirley, Dewey Redman, Jimmy Cobb, Sandra Turner-Barnes, Charles Lloyd, Marcus Belgrave, Betty Carter, Jason Moran, Lizz Wright, Marian McPartland, Roy Brooks, Vijay Iyer, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Laurie Anderson, Terri Lynn Carrington, Esperanza Spalding, Hal Willner, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Dianne Reeves, Joe Lovano, Dr. Billy Taylor, Carrie Mae Weems, Angélique Kidjo, Mary Wilson and The Supremes, Howard University’s Afro-Blue and many others.
Allen contributed some of the most groundbreaking and forward thinking music of the time. The remarkable pianist leaves behind a wealth of material that will educate future generations of musicians. A mother of three, she credited her family for making it possible for her to maintain such a successful and fruitful career. She was a cutting edge performing artist, and continued to entertain internationally up until her death.
Geri Allen is survived by her father Mount Vernell Allen, Jr., brother Mount Vernell Allen III, and three children: Laila, Wally, and Barbara Antoinette. Funeral arrangements and a memorial service are pending.
Geri Allen - Live at the Village Vanguard:
Geri Allen: Piano
Charlie Haden: Bass
Paul Motian: Drums
Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Geri Allen - Etudes (1988):
Bass – Charlie HadenGeri Allen live at The Commons:
ASC TRIO:
Geri ALLEN: Piano
Esperanza SPALDING: Bass
Teri LYNE CARRIGTON: Drummer
"unconditional love"
(Composition by Geri Allen)
Ornette Coleman: Alto and Tenor saxophones and Violin,, Geri Allen: Piano, Charnett Moffett: Bass, Denardo Coleman: Drums
LIVE! 1994:
Geri Allen Trio performance:
Jazz 24/7 Presents — Geri Allen, A Tribute Concert
On February 16-17, 2018, Harvard University's Hutchins Center hosted “Timeless Portraits and Dreams: A Festival Symposium in Honor of Geri Allen.” Geri: Genius, Grace and Fire — A performance curated by Terri Lyne Carrington featuring Carmen Lundy, Oliver Lake, Don Byron, Kris Davis, Tia Fuller and Esperanza Spalding was webcast live by Jazz 24/7 from WGBH on Saturday February 17, 2018.
Geri Allen - 'Red Velvet In Winter':
"Red Velvet In Winter" is taken from Geri Allen's album "Flying Toward The
Sound". The video is excerpted from "Refractions", an art film directed
by Carrie Mae Weems.
The music was composed during Geri Allen's John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
Geri Allen - "Flying Toward The Sound" (composition by Geri Allen)
'Flying Toward The Sound' is taken from Geri Allen's album of the same name. The video is excerpted from "Refractions", an art film directed by Carrie Mae Weems.The music was composed during Geri Allen's John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/06/27/534409838/geri-allen-pianist-composer-and-educator-dies-at-60
Geri Allen, Pianist, Composer And Educator, Dies At 60
From
Geri Allen, a widely influential jazz pianist, composer and educator who defied classification while steadfastly affirming her roots in the hard-bop tradition of her native Detroit, died Tuesday in Philadelphia. She was 60, and had lived for the last four years in Pittsburgh.
The cause was cancer, said Ora Harris, her manager of 30 years. The news shocked Allen's devoted listeners, as well as her peers and the many pianists she directly influenced.
In addition to her varied and commanding work as a leader, Allen made her mark as a venturesome improviser on notable albums with the saxophonist-composers Ornette Coleman, Oliver Lake, Steve Coleman and Charles Lloyd; drummer Ralph Peterson, Jr.; bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Paul Motian; and many others. Her recent collaborations with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, in separate trios featuring bassist Esperanza Spalding and tenor saxophonist David Murray, found her in a ceaselessly exploratory mode, probing new harmonic expanses and dynamic arcs.
Allen's solo piano work, from Home Grown in 1985 to Flying Toward the Sound in 2010, reveals an uncommon technical prowess and kaleidoscopic tonal range. The subtitle of Flying Toward the Sound claims inspiration from Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock specifically, but on this and other recordings we hear Allen, unfailingly distinctive. From Home Grown, the track "Black Man," with its looping, interlocking pulses and forward momentum, points clearly toward a rhythmic sensibility heard today from such celebrated pianists as Craig Taborn and Vijay Iyer.
Geri Antoinette Allen was born June 12, 1957 in Pontiac, Mich., and raised in Detroit. Her father, Mount V. Allen, Jr., was a principal in the Detroit public school system, and her mother, Barbara Jean, was a defense contract administrator for the U.S. government.
Allen took up the piano at age 7 and went on to graduate from Cass Technical High School, the alma mater of jazz greats on the order of Paul Chambers, Wardell Gray, Gerald Wilson and Donald Byrd.
While in school, Allen became a protégée of the late trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, who directed the Jazz Development Workshop and also mentored saxophonist Kenny Garrett and violinist Regina Carter, among many others. (Belgrave would go on to appear on Allen's albums The Nurturer and Maroons in the early 1990s.) From another mentor, the late drummer Roy Brooks, Allen developed a deep love for Thelonious Monk, whose compositions she masterfully interpreted.
Allen graduated from Howard University in 1979, as one of the first students to complete a jazz studies degree there. She earned an M.A. in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1982. For part of a year she sustained herself touring with former Supreme Mary Wilson. In 1984, she debuted with The Printmakers, a tight, imaginative trio session with bassist Anthony Cox and drummer Andrew Cyrille.
Soon afterward, Allen made a series of statements with the vanguardist M-Base Collective, spearheaded by Steve Coleman. She appeared on his debut album, Motherland Pulse, in 1985, and on several subsequent releases by his flagship band, Five Elements. Her own album Open On All Sides In The Middle, from 1986, featured Coleman in a bustling electro-acoustic ensemble, alongside other players including Belgrave and trombonist Robin Eubanks.
Trio summits followed with Ron Carter, a fellow Cass Tech alum, and Tony Williams (Twenty One); with Haden and Motian (Etudes, Live at the Village Vanguard); and with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette (The Life of a Song). In each setting, Allen proved more than a virtuoso able to marshal the greatest rhythm sections; she was a musical partner with prodigious ears, motivated by the percussive energy of the avant-garde, the elusive unified spark of straight-ahead swing and the expressive truth of piano balladry.
Allen's 1996 encounter with Ornette Coleman, documented on the albums Sound Museum: Hidden Man and Sound Museum: Three Women, stands out in part for its historical significance: this was the first time since Walter Norris on Somethin' Else!!!! in 1958 that an acoustic pianist had recorded with Coleman.
The piano had little use in his free-floating music, because it tended to impose a conventional chordal fixity; not with Allen on the bandstand. She played a multifaceted textural and contrapuntal role, her ocean-deep harmonic knowledge guiding but never limiting her, from gorgeous and evocative rubato episodes to urgent free blowing. Her melodic voice, too, sometimes moving in unison with Coleman, brought a clarion intensity that remains unique in his output.
Along with her rare qualities as a player, Allen had significant impact as an educator for 10 years at the University of Michigan. She began as director of jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh, her alma mater, in 2013, succeeding one of her mentors, Nathan Davis. Three years later she became artistic director of the Carr Center — characterized by Mark Stryker, author of the forthcoming book Made In Detroit: Jazz From The Motor City, as "a downtown Detroit arts organization that primarily champions African-American culture and has a strong arts education program."
In both her institutional work and her musical projects, Allen engaged in a serious way with jazz as part of a larger African-American continuum in the arts. Her 2013 album Grand River Crossings: Motown & Motor City Inspirations was a hometown homage, but also a reflection on the porous boundaries of black music. Last year the artist Carrie Mae Weems welcomed Allen and her trio to the Guggenheim Museum for part of a performance series called "Past Tense/Future Perfect."
In her own work, Allen often sought to broaden her reference points and sonic palette, featuring the Atlanta Jazz Chorus on Timeless Portraits and Dreams (2006); the electric and acoustic guitar of Living Colour's Vernon Reid on The Gathering (1998); and tap dancers Lloyd Storey, on Open On All Sides In The Middle, and Maurice Chestnut, on Geri Allen & Time Line Live (2010). She shed light on the legacy of the still-underappreciated pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams on Zodiac Suite: Revisited, credited to the Mary Lou Williams Collective, with bassist Buster Williams and drummers Billy Hart and Andrew Cyrille.
Allen is survived by her father, her brother, Mount Allen III, and three children: Laila Deen, Wallace Vernell and Barbara Ann. Her marriage to the trumpeter Wallace Roney ended in divorce.
Along with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, Allen received the African American Classical Music Award from Spelman College and a Distinguished Alumni Award from Howard. In 1995 she became the first recipient of Soul Train's Lady of Soul Award for jazz album of the year, for Twenty-One. The following year she became the first woman to win the Jazzpar Prize, a highly prestigious Danish honor.
Over years of seeing Allen live, it's striking to recall her at Caramoor in 1994, when she shared a solo piano bill with the great Kenny Barron. She parsed Monk and other material, including her own, and encored in a riotous two-piano showdown with Barron on "Tea For Two," dealing impressively with a tune of older vintage. Years later, at the Village Vanguard, she led an engrossing quartet with Hart, bassist (and fellow Cass Tech alum) Robert Hurst and percussionist Mino Cinelu.
In terms of the unexpected, however, don't for a moment discount Allen's 2011 Christmas album, A Child Is Born. She plays not just piano but also Farfisa organ, celeste, clavinet and Fender Rhodes, taking "Angels We Have Heard On High" and "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" to harmonic places they've likely never been. Even at its most searching, complex and sonically novel, there's a contemplative quality in the music that makes this a worthy listen as we mourn Allen's untimely passing.
Geri Allen Symposium - Panel 3: 'Working with Geri Allen:
Her Music and Vision'
"Black Man" by Geri Allen
Album: Home Grown
℗ Minor Music Released on: 2012-08-27
Artist: Geri Allen
Composer: Geri Allen
Music Publisher: Antoinette Music SESAC
Geri Allen Symposium
Panel 2: 'Geri Allen as Scholar and Educator'
1:18 / 8:13
Geri Allen - Topic
"In Walked Bud"
(Composition by Bud Powell)
GERI ALLEN · CHARLIE HADEN · PAUL MOTIAN
LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD
Unissued Tracks (選曲・監修:大西順子)
℗ 2022 diskunion
Released on: 2022-01-19
Music Publisher: Music Sales
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/534409838
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Pianist Geri Allen was a mainstay on the jazz scene for more than 30 years. She collaborated with Ornette Coleman, Betty Carter, Charles Lloyd, Steve Coleman and many, many others. Allen was a native of Detroit who loved Motown as much as bebop. She died yesterday afternoon of complications from cancer. She was 60 years old. NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas has this remembrance.
ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE: Geri Allen was very much a child of the Motor City. She was born in Pontiac, Mich., but her parents moved the family to Detroit when she was very young. She studied classical piano as a child. But her father loved jazz, and she grew up listening to his records, as she told NPR in 2004.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
GERI ALLEN: I remember as a child hearing the music around the house. I could tell the music was truly loved. All of that has to have affected me as a player. I think by the time I was in high school I was certain that I wanted to be a jazz musician.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
TSIOULCAS: As a teenager, Geri Allen was mentored by a Detroit legend, the late trumpet and flugelhorn player Marcus Belgrave. He nurtured generations of jazz talent in the Motor City. But as Belgrave told NPR in 1995, Allen was shy at first and rattled by some of the other male students.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MARCUS BELGRAVE: The first thing I asked her to do was to write a piece for these young gentlemen that were intimidating her. And she came back with a piece that intimidated me.
TSIOULCAS: Belgrave thought Geri Allen was so good that he invited her to tour Europe with his band while she was still in high school. She went on to get a degree in jazz studies from Howard University and a master's in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh. And she paid that forward, teaching the next generation of jazz musicians at several universities. All the while, she kept up her recording career, playing on over a hundred albums as a bandleader and side player.
(SOUNDBITE OF GERI ALLEN, CHARLIE HADEN AND PAUL MOTIAN'S "LONELY WOMAN")
TSIOULCAS: Geri Allen found a way to meld the avant garde with Motown. One of her first professional jobs was playing with Mary Wilson of the Supremes. It's a connection she celebrated on her 2013 album "Grand River Crossings."
(SOUNDBITE OF GERI ALLEN'S "WANNA BE STARTIN' SOMETHIN'")
TSIOULCAS: But at the root of it all was the love of jazz that was born in her childhood home.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
ALLEN: It was a very, very prideful and still is a very prideful thing for me to be a jazz musician because of the legacy. You travel around the world and you have a real clear sense that everyone understands the legacy of this music and the fact that it is definitely one of the most revered and respected musics in the world. And I'm very proud to have a little part in that somehow.
TSIOULCAS: She was more than a little part of it. Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR News, New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF GERI ALLEN'S "YOUR PURE SELF - MOTHER TO SON")
Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
January 18, 2012:
Interview: Geri Allen (Part 1)
Interview: Geri Allen (Part 2)
Too many jazz fans are unfamiliar with pianist Geri Allen. Though not yet a household name, Geri will be soon. Her recordings and live performances make her one of jazz's most vibrant and dynamic musicians. Geri has been categorized as avant-garde,
Last week Geri performed with her trio—Terri Lyne Carrington on drums and Esperanza Spalding on bass—at the Village Vanguard. This Saturday (January 21), Geri will be
In Part 1 of my three-part conversation with Geri, 54, the pianist and associate professor at the University of Michigan talks about growing up in Detroit, her musical mentors and why the visual arts offer lessons jazz appreciation...
Geri Allen: Yes, and so was my brother Mount. My mom and her family were from Pontiac. But when I was very young, my parents moved to Detroit, where my dad was a teacher and later an administrator in the Detroit Public Schools.
JW: Growing up in the 1970s, Detroit was a center of soul and dance music. Why did you turn to jazz?
GA: I loved all of it. I listened to radio station WJLB and danced to soul, disco—everything. But my heart was in jazz.
JW: Did soul and pop leave any impression on you?
GA: Oh sure. I heard both forms on the radio and was trying to learn those songs by ear. I realized later that many of the musicians on those recordings were jazz musicians—many of whom later became my mentors.
GA: Yes I studied with a terrific teacher—Patricia Wilhelm—from the time I was in the 7th grade until college. She was very supportive of my search to become a jazz musician. Though she was a classical teacher and didn’t have a jazz background, she wasn’t afraid of the music and understood its value and importance to me. [Pictured: Geri Allen]
JW: What did you learn from trumpeter-teacher Marcus Belgrave when you attended Detroit's Cass Technical High School in the 1970s?
GA: I was very fortunate. The entire jazz scene in Detroit has been fortunate to have Marcus [pictured] there. He’s still that
JW: For example?
GA: The first time I went to Europe I went with Marcus, when I was in high school. The trip validated my talent. We went to Amsterdam and played at the Bimhuis Club for
JW: Did Belgrave point you in a specific musical direction?
GA: I came away with a greater respect for the whole African-American music continuum. The music of the
GA: Ethnomusicology is the study of how music functions in society and the value placed on music in various cultures around the world. For example, the music of most African societies integrates all of the arts—particularly dance. By doing this, the entire culture is embraced, not just music and musicians. The result is that audiences have a more vivid sense of music’s importance. The cultural embrace of music has been a big part of my reality and my art.
JW: Your music tends to be highly textured in this regard.
GA: When audiences are really a part of what’s being played and they experience the motion and flow of the moment, the spirit of the music crystallizes in a deep and meaningful way. This is key to the quality of the experience..
JW: Did you make a conscious decision to become an avant-garde pianist?
GA: I’ve always felt that having my freedom in music was important. That’s a part of my upbringing. I need to feel I can be versatile, to have the ability to move back and forth between different types of music. I’m attracted to the music of a large variety of great musicians. Then I synthesize all of it in a way that retains my freedom and particular energy as an artist.
JW: Doesn’t avant-garde jazz require a different commitment?
GA: Yes. Every music has its own set of idiosyncrasies and audiences are very sophisticated. People coming to experience the music come because they want to
GA: How do you mean?
JW: Your music feels as though it’s extending a helping hand to the audience, as if the music is about the community rather than just the technical ability of the performer. Where does this come from?
GA: I spend a great deal of time with friends in the visual arts. They would never allow me to pigeonhole what I saw in their paintings, film or sculpture. Some critics might ask them, “What were you trying to convey in this work?” Their answer would be, “Just look at it. What do you feel?” I tend to have the same view about my music. People who come with an open mind will become a part of the experience, informing the moment of improvisation by their willingness to participate. [Album cover artwork by Kabuya Pamela Bowens]
GA: I’m excited to be working again with filmmaker Carrie Mae Weems. My album Flying Towards the Sound included three short art films by Carrie Mae. We may do some excerpts from that album. Then I’ll play solo piano.
JazzWax tracks: A good place
JazzWax clip: Here's Geri Allen's Feed the Fire from Twenty One (1994)...
ACS: Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington, Esperanza Spalding
Visit this artist's website: http://www.imnworld.com/artists/detail/231/ACS-Allen-Carrington-Spalding
ACS (Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington and Esperanza Spalding) gathers three of the most important female instrumentalists in current jazz. Formed out of their work together on Carrington’s Grammy Award winning album “The Mosaic Project,” the small ensemble stretches boundaries and revels in the art form. In response to their debut at New York’s legendary Village Vanguard, The Village Voice remarked, “the set’s expressionistic push-pull turned out to be a show of jazz fealty as disorienting as it was riveting.” The trio is elegant, experimental, and unquestionably bold.
Geri Allen is an internationally recognized composer and pianist. Since 1982 she has recorded, performed or collaborated with Ravi Coltrane, Dianne Reeves, Bill Cosby, Ron Carter, Ornette Coleman and Paul Motian. Allen is also an active jazz educator, and has taught at the New England Conservatory, The New School in New York and her alma mater, Howard University. She currently teaches at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance as an Associate Professor of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation.
American drummer Terri Lyne Carrington has been at the top of the music industry for almost 25 years, collaborating with luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, David Sanborn, Joe Sample, Cassandra Wilson, Clark Terry, Nancy Wilson, George Duke, Dianne Reeves, and numerous others. Her latest endeavor, “The Mosaic Project,” brings together some of the world’s most celebrated female instrumentalists and vocalists.
In one of the most startling achievements in jazz history, bassist Esperanza Spalding captured the world’s attention upon earning the title of Best New Artist at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards. A gifted composer with a hypnotic voice, Spalding stretches the boundaries of jazz and continues her evolution with the 2012 release of Radio Music Society, which she describes as “bombastic and fun – funkier and more upbeat” than her critically acclaimed Chamber Music Society.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/geri-allen
Geri Allen
Pianist, composer, Guggenheim Fellow, and educator Geri Allen died on Tuesday, June 27, 2017 from complications of cancer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She had recently celebrated her 60th birthday.
Hailed as one of the most accomplished pianists and educators of her time, Allen's most recent position was as Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She was especially proud of performing with renowned pianist McCoy Tyner for the last two years, and was also part of two recent groundbreaking trios: ACS (Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Esperanza Spalding) and the MAC Power Trio with David Murray and Carrington — their debut recording Perfection was released on Motéma Music in 2016 to critical acclaim.
"The jazz community will never be the same with the loss of one of our geniuses, Geri Allen. Her virtuosity and musicality are unparalleled," expressed Carrington upon learning of her passing. "I will miss my sister and friend, but I am thankful for all of the music she made and all of the incredible experiences we had together for over 35 years. She is a true original — a one of kind — never to be forgotten. My heart mourns, but my spirit is filled with the gift of having known and learned from Geri Allen."
She was the first woman and youngest person to receive the Danish Jazz Par Prize, and was the first recipient of the Soul Train Lady of Soul Award for Jazz. In 2011, she was nominated for an NAACP Award for Timeline, her Tap Quartet project. Over the last few years, Allen served as the program director of NJPAC's All-Female Jazz Residency, which offered a weeklong one-of-a-kind opportunity for young women, ages 14-25, to study jazz.
Allen was also recently honored to be one of the producers of the expanded and re- mastered recording of Erroll Garner's The Complete Concert by the Sea, which garnered her an Essence Image Award nomination as well as a GRAMMY® Award- nomination in 2016. She felt strongly that students should have access to this material, and went on to organize a 60th anniversary performance of the material at the 2015 Monterey Jazz Festival with Jason Moran and Christian Sands.
Having grown up in Detroit, a region known for its rich musical history, Allen's affinity for jazz stemmed from her father's passion for the music. She began taking lessons at 7-years-old, and started her early music education under the mentorship of trumpeter Marcus Belgrave at the Cass Technical High School. In 1979, she was one of the first to graduate from Howard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in jazz studies. It was there that she began to embrace music from all cultures that would ultimately influence her work. During that time, she studied with the great Kenny Barron in New York City.
"I first met Geri when she was a student at Howard. She would take the train up to my house in Brooklyn for lessons. Even then it was apparent that Geri heard some things musically that others did not," Barron reflects. "In 1994 we performed a duo piano concert at the Caramoor Festival in New York and I realized how fearless she was and at the same time how focused she was. It was a lesson that I took to heart. Geri is not only a great musician, composer and pianist, she is a giant and will be sorely missed."
In New York, Allen met Nathan Davis, a respected educator who encouraged her to attend the University of Pittsburgh where he served as Director for their Jazz Studies department. She followed his advice and earned her Masters Degree in Ethnomusicology in 1982. In 2013, she became their Director of Jazz Studies upon Davis' retirement.
While at UPITT, Allen's commitment to community outreach and bridging educational inequities manifested through her pioneering engagement on the research education network of Internet2 and CENIC, where she connected virtually to universities and cultural institutions across the country, collaborating with artists and technologists such as Terri Lyne Carrington, Chris Chafe, George Lewis, Michael Dressen, Jason Moran, Vijay Iyer and the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars.
She was also the musical director of the Mary Lou Williams Collective, recording and performing the music of the great Mary Lou Williams, including her sacred work Mass For Peace. Allen also collaborated with S. Epatha Merkerson and Farah Jasmine Griffin on two music theatre projects: "Great Apollo Women," which premiered at the legendary Apollo Theatre, and "A Conversation with Mary Lou," which premiered at the Harlem Stage as an educational component for the Harlem Stage collaboration. The University of Pittsburgh hosted the first ever Mary Lou Williams Cyber Symposium where Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, and Allen performed a three piano improvisation from Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pittsburgh in real time using Internet2 technology.
Allen was a recent recipient of the Howard University Pinnacle Award presented by Professor Connaitre Miller and Afro Blue. She has served as a faculty member at Howard University, the New England Conservatory, and the University of Michigan where she taught for ten years. In 2014, Allen was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Music Degree by Berklee College of Music in Boston. The Honorable Congressman John Conyers Jr. presented the 2014 Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Jazz Legacy Award to Allen.
In 1985, Allen released The Printmakers — her debut release as a leader, and one of the hundreds of releases that encompasses her boisterous discography. In 1990, she signed to Blue Note Records and released The Nurturer with mentor Marcus Belgrave, Kenny Garrett, Robert Hurst, Jeff "Tain" Watts and Eli Fountain. This release showcased a more conventional playing style while still maintaining the freedom of improvisation and expression that was so present at the start of her career.
Throughout the late '90s and early 2000s, Allen continued to be a pioneer for the genre both as a side-woman and as a leader. Her improvisational virtuosity was displayed on Ornette Coleman's 1996 release of Sound Museum, her 1988 release The Gathering, and again in 2004 with The Life a Song featuring Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette. In 2010 her solo piano album, Flying Towards the Sound was critically acclaimed and was rated "Best of 2010" on NPR and DownBeat magazine's Critics Polls.
Allen's commissioned work "For the Healing of the Nations" in 2006 was written to pay tribute to the victims, survivors, and family members of the September 11th attacks. This special tribute was performed by the Howard University's Afro Blue Jazz Choir and included performances from jazz musicians such as Oliver Lake, Craig Harris, Andy Bey, among others. It was also around this time that Allen had been awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship honoring her prolific role in furthering this creative art form. This allowed her to release the compositions "Refractions" and "Flying Towards the Sound," as well as three short films under the Motéma Music label.
In 2008, Allen received the African American Classical Music Award from the Women of the New Jersey chapter of Spelman College as well as "A Salute to African- American Women: Phenomenal Woman" from the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, Epsilon chapter at the University of Michigan. Allen also performed in a theatrical and musical celebration honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the statue unveiling in Washington, DC.
In a career that spanned more than 35 years, she recorded, performed and collaborated with some of the most important artists of our time including Ornette Coleman, Ravi Coltrane, George Shirley, Dewey Redman, Jimmy Cobb, Sandra Turner-Barnes, Charles Lloyd, Marcus Belgrave, Betty Carter, Jason Moran, Lizz Wright, Marian McPartland, Roy Brooks, Vijay Iyer, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Laurie Anderson, Terri Lynn Carrington, Esperanza Spalding, Hal Willner, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Dianne Reeves, Joe Lovano, Dr. Billy Taylor, Carrie Mae Weems, Angélique Kidjo, Mary Wilson and The Supremes, Howard University's Afro-Blue and many others.
Allen contributed some of the most groundbreaking and forward thinking music of the time. The remarkable pianist leaves behind a wealth of material that will educate future generations of musicians. A mother of three, she credited her family for making it possible for her to maintain such a successful and fruitful career. She was a cutting edge performing artist, and continued to entertain internationally up until her death.
Hear one of Geri Allen’s earliest recordings, featured on a new album by the Howard University Jazz Ensemble
When the pianist Geri Allen, one of the most gifted musical pathfinders of her generation, died last year at 60, it sent a shockwave through the jazz community. That shock reverberated with special force through the halls of Howard University, her alma mater. And the Howard University Jazz Ensemble, under the longtime direction of Professor Fred Irby III, decided to shine a special light on her legacy with the album it put out this year.
Titled A Tribute to Geri Allen, it includes three recordings from the vault, featuring a young Allen performing her compositions with the large ensemble.
The archival recordings come from 1977, ’78 and ’79, during her time as a precocious undergrad in Howard’s jazz studies program. (The CD’s remaining seven tracks were recorded last year by the present-day HUJE.) These are the earliest known recordings of Allen playing with a big band — and they are among the earliest public recordings of her, period. (Allen participated in the recording of an album by Haki Madhubuti’s Afrikan Liberation Arts Ensemble in 1976.) They were put out on annual HUJE albums, but this year marks their first-ever release on CD.
Allen sings and plays on the ’77 recording, “A Communion of My Soul,” which mixes gospel, soul and Latin influences that probably would have felt right at home in the Bohemian Caverns (“the sole home of soul jazz”) during its 1960s heyday. “For Real Moments,” from 1978, is a searching ballad that suggests the journeys Allen would embark on later in life. And 1979’s “Give The Band A Hand,” the album’s finale, bursts forth — a brassy and bright number that lets Allen and her fellow HUJE members blow over racing bop changes.
Irby, who has instructed the big band since the 1970s, told CapitalBop in an interview that he felt he “had to do something” to memorialize his one-time student. Irby was the one who recruited Allen to come to Howard in 1975, and remembered her being “very smart and super talented. All the musicians at the university respected her.” By putting these performances out into the world, Allen’s former teacher hopes to broaden the public’s understanding of the formative years of her career.
Below you can listen to “For Real
Moments,” which Irby gave CapitalBop permission to share via SoundCloud.
For copies of the Howard University Jazz Ensemble’s Tribute to Geri Allen CD, contact Irby at firby@howard.edu.
https://soundcloud.com/capitalbop/howard-university-jazz-ensemble-feat-geri-allen-for-real-moments
"For Real Moments" is an early composition from the legendary pianist Geri Allen. This 1978 recording comes from her time as a member of the Howard University Jazz Ensemble. It was released 40 years after it was originally recorded, as part of the HUJE album "A Tribute to Geri Allen."
For copies of the album, which contains two other tracks from the 1970s featuring Allen as well as seven tracks recorded by the HUJE in 2017, contact Professor Fred Irby at firby@howard.edu.
Howard University Jazz Ensemble, feat. Geri Allen - "For Real Moments"
Geri Allen - Feed the Fire:
From album Twenty One (1994)
Geri Allen - piano
Ron Carter - bass
Tony Williams - drums
https://geriallen.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Geri-Allen-Downbeat-HOF.pdf
Geri Allen Enters the Downbeat Hall of Fame
Read the full article by Allen Morrison
"The subject of pianist, composer, scholar and educator Geri Allen is an endless fascination for me, as it should be for anyone interested in modern music.
So I was thrilled when "Chamber Music Magazine" gave me a few thousand words to express that, taking as my main inspiration the Fall/Winter 2020 issue of the journal, Jazz and Culture, which was focused solely on her."--Larry Blumenfeld
Geri Allen enters Downbeat Hall of Fame after decades of neglect
The foremost pianist of her generation enters the Downbeat Magazine’s Hall of Fame, but Geri Allen was often neglected by the magazine
I used to read the Downbeat Magazine’s yearly critics poll to see which albums and musicians was top voted. This was before streamed music and you often wanted some kind of recommendation before you bought a record or went to a concert.
Those critic polls probably helped shape my taste in music. I trusted those critics who I assumed listened to more music than I did but eventually you evolve a taste of your own and start disagreeing with some critics and their opinions. The most obvious example of this was my great appreciation for Geri Allen and the big neglect of her in Downbeat.
When her trio album The Life of a Song with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette was released in 2004 I thought it was a major return for her since she had not released an album in six years. The reviewer in Downbeat did not like it but wrote that his wife and daughter did and ended his piece by asking if it was a chick record. I could have told him no as I still consider it a major piano jazz album. It was the kind of sexism Allen encountered in a still very much male dominated industry.
Late recognition
The reviewer also described her music as emotional in opposition to his own taste in logical music. You could also accuse the music of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker or Billie Holiday for being emotional.
Most of Allen´s recordings got lukewarm reviews in Downbeat. There were a few exceptions. In 1993 her album Maroons was listed as one of the top albums of the year. In 1997 the album Sound Museum: Hidden Man which she recorded as side woman with Ornette Coleman was voted as best album of the year. But her own album Eyes…In the Back of Your Head released the same year also featuring Coleman got a hostile review.
Downbeat did few features on her. In January 1994 she was on the cover with older master pianist Hank Jones. The article which is an interview with Allen and Jones focus on her ability to play both experimental free music and traditional forms which she recently had explored with singer Betty Carter.
Recognized by her peers
From the early 1990s onwards, Allen was often voted among the 10 or 20 best pianists of the year, but she never made it to the top until 2018, ironically after her death the previous year. Instead, the critics favored older or younger men before her.
But Allen was acknowledged where it counted: among other musicians. Betty Carter and Ornette Coleman were just a few of many jazz masters who featured Allen. Charlie Haden and Paul Motian who previously had played in a trio with Keith Jarrett toured and recorded extensively with Allen in the 1980s. They were just one of many impressive rhythm sections Allen worked with. Others include Ron Carter and Tony Williams, and Buster Williams and Lenny White.
When Wayne Shorter turned 80 in 2013 Geri Allen toured with a trio of Esperanza Spalding and Terri Lyme Carrington playing the compositions of Shorter and often opening the concerts before his quartet. Shortly before she died Allen also toured with McCoy Tyner playing with his rhythm section.
Joining her role models
After her premature death of cancer in 2017 she got a lot of recognition by colleagues including a younger generation of pianists like Kris Davis, Vijay Iyer, and Craig Taborn who she influenced.
Among her own influences was Eric Dolphy who she wrote a thesis on and composed tributes to. Dolphy had the same knowledge of traditional forms and urge to expand them as Allen. Later Allen also embraced the influence of pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams recording her Zodiac Suite.
On her solo piano album Flying Towards the Sound Allen named piano influences Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, and Herbie Hancock. That is like the three major stylistic influences preceding herself and you can hear aspects of them all in her own style. Now she joins them, as well as Dolphy and Mary Lou Williams, in the Downbeat Hall of Fame. I guess that late recognition is better than none at all.
Geri Allen Trio: Dark Prince:
| Born | June 12, 1957 Pontiac, Michigan, U.S. |
|---|---|
| Died | June 27, 2017 (aged 60) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Howard University University of Pittsburgh |
| Musical career | |
| Genres | Jazz, blues, funk, gospel |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, educator, composer |
| Instrument(s) | Piano |
| Years active | 1982–2017 |
| Labels | Motema Music, Polygram, Storyville, Blue Note, Telarc |
| Website | www.GeriAllen.com |
|
| |
Geri Antoinette Allen (June 12, 1957 – June 27, 2017) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator. She taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Pittsburgh.
Early life and education
Allen was born in Pontiac, Michigan, on June 12, 1957, and grew up in Detroit.[1] "Her father, Mount Allen Jr, was a school principal, her mother, Barbara, a government administrator in the defence industry."[2] Allen was educated in Detroit Public Schools.[3] She started playing the piano at the age of seven, and settled on becoming a jazz pianist in her early teens.[2]
Allen graduated from Howard University's jazz studies program in 1979.[4] She then continued her studies: with pianist Kenny Barron in New York;[2] and at the University of Pittsburgh, where she completed a master's degree in ethnomusicology in 1982.[4] After this, she returned to New York.[2]
Later life and career
Allen became involved in the M-Base collective in New York.[2] Her recording debut as a leader was in 1984, resulting in The Printmakers.[1] This trio album, with bassist Anthony Cox and drummer Andrew Cyrille, also featured some of Allen's compositions.[1]
Allen married trumpeter Wallace Roney in 1995.[2] They had a daughter and a son; the marriage ended in divorce.[2] Allen was awarded the Jazzpar Prize in 1996.[2] In the same year, she recorded two albums with Ornette Coleman: Sound Museum: Hidden Man and Sound Museum: Three Women.[4]
In 2006, Allen composed "For the Healing of the Nations", a suite written in tribute to the victims and survivors of the September 11 attacks.[2] She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008.[2]
Allen was a longtime resident of Montclair, New Jersey.[5] For 10 years she taught jazz and improvisational studies at the University of Michigan, and she became director of the jazz studies program at the University of Pittsburgh in 2013.[1]
Allen died on June 27, 2017, two weeks after her 60th birthday, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after suffering from cancer.[6]
Awards
- Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee, 2014[7]
- Guggenheim Fellowship, 2008[8]
- African American Classical Music Award from Spelman College, 2007[9]
- The Benny Golson Jazz Master Award, 2005[10]
- Distinguished Alumni Award from Howard, 1996
- Danish Jazzpar Prize (first woman recipient), 1996
- Soul Train's Lady of Soul Award (first recipient) for jazz album of the year for Twenty-One, 1995
Discography
As leader/co-leader
As sidewoman
Main source:[13]
|
With Franco Ambrosetti
With Betty Carter
With Ornette Coleman
With Steve Coleman
With Charlie Haden
With Oliver Lake
With Charles Lloyd
With Wallace Roney
With Trio 3 (Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman & Andrew Cyrille)
|
With others
|
Filmography
Geri Allen portrays jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams and performs with the jazz band in the Robert Altman film Kansas City.
