Few jazz musicians have united the music’s history under their fingers as Geri Allen did. You could call her the essential connector of jazz’s midcentury years with its postmodern present. But listen to Allen for any duration, and your mind goes straight to the moment she’s inhabiting: Geri Allen’s world of time, with its stretched and blended layers of harmony and rhythm.
In her piano playing, you can hear the 12-tone action painting of Cecil Taylor, the orchestral sensibility of Mary Lou Williams, the harmonic grace and dimension of Herbie Hancock. Allen also easily adapted the influence of house music, hip-hop, funk, and West African and Afro-Latin drumming into her compositions — and throughout her career, she placed music into conversation with other art forms. When “the entire culture is embraced, not just music and musicians,” she said, “audiences have a more vivid sense of music’s importance.”
Allen undertook a stage production dedicated to Mary Lou Williams, with the author Farah Jasmine Griffin (quoted below), and she created a project of music and visuals titled “Slow Fade to Black” with the photographer Carrie Mae Weems. Her Timeline band included the tap dancer Maurice Chestnut as a member. Toward the end of her life, a fruitful collaboration with Esperanza Spalding and Terri Lyne Carrington signaled the beginning of another phase for Allen, who seemed poised to receive the kind of accolades that had been her due, when her career was cut short by cancer. In the nine years since her death, at 60, Allen’s influence in and beyond jazz has only grown; today, playing her compositions is almost a rite of passage for young improvising musicians.
For an introduction to the music of Geri Allen, read the following selections from a panel of musicians and writers. Don’t miss the playlists embedded below, and if you have a favorite that was left out, drop it in the comments.
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‘Angels’
Farah Jasmine Griffin, scholar
“Angels” is the last track on Geri’s 1998 release, “The Gathering,” an album of original works that helps to establish her as one of our greatest jazz artists, arrangers and composers. This tune gives us an aural glimpse into the artist at this stage in her life — as mother, musician and bandleader, in full possession of her powers. Here we have her babies, “Little” Laila, her youngest daughter, and her son, “Little” Wally, as well as her husband, Wallace Roney, on trumpet, and a bevy of extraordinary musicians, including her fellow Detroiter Dwight Andrews on alto, piccolo and bass flute, and Buster Williams on bass. In the center is Geri, who is nothing less than majestic on piano. On the one hand she keeps time, building a kind of safety net and momentum, and on the other she dazzles on a melody that will live with you. Here, she is the Gatherer, setting the welcome table. Long after, you will light up when other musicians quote it in homage to her. At those times, like me, you will say, “That’s Geri. That’s ‘Angels.’ She’s with us. Still.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
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‘First Black Man … M.O.P.E.’
Courtney Bryan, composer and pianist
Geri Allen was a visionary and the ultimate composer, performer and collaborator. While I have been a longtime fan of her music, it was more recently that I first heard the striking recording of “First Black Man … M.O.P.E.” from her second album, “Home Grown” (1985). Similar in style to her composition “Drummer’s Song” from “Open on All Sides in the Middle” (1987), Allen’s composition is full of complex, interlocking rhythms and bright, fanfare-like melodies. With “First Black Man … M.O.P.E.,” Geri Allen transforms the piano to sound like an orchestra of percussion and horns, showcasing intricate math and melodies as composer, with piano virtuosity out of this world, and with brilliant, pure-fire improvisation on top of all the layers. I love how the piece ends just as urgently as it begins.
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‘Flying Toward the Sound’
Robin D.G. Kelley, historian
Geri Allen’s music is like the Caribbean Sea. No matter where you dip your toes, it is warm, blue, alive, and prone to occasional hurricanes. Dip your ear into any Geri Allen recording and you’ll fall in love. Geri, whom I came to know not only as a brilliant pianist/composer but as a scholar/teacher, drew on her encyclopedic knowledge of the music to produce a wholly original sound. Few musicians could do what she did. Her facility, rhythmic precision, harmonic ingenuity and pure soulfulness would have made Tatum, Monk and Jimi Hendrix sit down and take notice. While she brought energy and dynamism to any ensemble, I chose “Flying Toward the Sound,” the title track to her eight-part solo piano suite, inspired by Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. It is a journey beautifully told. Complete. There is nothing else to say. Dive in.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
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‘Timeless Portraits and Dreams’
Carmen Lundy, vocalist
When Geri first gave me the chart for this tune, she said, “Here, Carmen,” in her lovely, gentle way, though there was always that intense, fire-burning soul of hers shining through too. The depth of the conception jumped out at me: What starts out as a plaintive little phrase grows into so much more. The harmony is full of polychords, where you’ve got two harmonies layered on top of each other, adding an expansion and a depth to things. And she had clearly written it for me, in the truest part of my voice — so that every note is coming out of me without any struggle. There is such complexity and authenticity in her understanding of this music; I call it her jazzness, or sometimes just her highness. And then, she added a lyric that beautifully re-expresses this already completely revealed composition! She’s talking about “timeless portraits and dreams”: a portrait is a rendering of something that already exists, and a dream is something that we want to bring into existence. “In tomorrow’s world / Let joy and love run free.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
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‘Unconditional Love’
Milena Casado, trumpeter
I still remember the first time I heard Geri Allen live with ACS Trio alongside Terri Lyne Carrington and Esperanza Spalding at the Jazz in Marciac festival. It was such a pivotal and inspiring moment for me. That concert has stayed with me ever since, especially the moment they performed Geri’s composition “Unconditional Love,” from her album “The Life of a Song.” I couldn’t stop listening to it afterward. “Unconditional Love” is one of my favorite compositions. The melody and harmony are so beautiful, and the movement within the music, as well as the interplay between the trio, are amazing. I love listening to it and performing it too; it gives me a sense of belonging, and acceptance. There is something so honest and vulnerable about it. It is a special composition for me, and it has become the soundtrack to many important moments in my life.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
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‘Tears of a Clown’
Vernon Reid, guitarist
Geri Allen was a completely original voice on the piano, an original voice as a composer, and an original voice as an improviser. One side of Geri that I adored was her enormous pride to be a Michigander — and her love for Motown music was a major part of her identity as a musician, even as she went headlong into jazz. When she was in her mid-20s, I remember she auditioned to be in the band of Mary Wilson. I’ll never forget: She was so nervous, but when she aced this audition she was in seventh heaven. It meant so much to her, to work with one of the original Supremes. I would point any listener to Geri’s album “Grand River Crossings: Motown and Motor City Inspirations,” from later in her career. This record was very close to her heart. And her amazing version of “Tears of a Clown” is a great point of entry into this side of her artistry.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
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‘Well Done’
Kassa Overall, drummer and producer
I decided to highlight Geri Allen’s recording of “Well Done,” featuring Carmen Lundy, from her album “Timeless Portraits and Dreams,” for a very personal reason. Geri Allen was the first person to take me to Europe as a professional musician. Though I was still immature, and making mistakes I didn’t know existed, she held me close and made sure I was heading in the right direction, both musically and personally. During that first tour in the summer of 2007, we played “Well Done” every set. And the experience always got me. Being up there with the masters of that time playing on such a high level, emoting such pure feelings of love and peace, I would tear up every time. These moments of clarity sustained me throughout my career. Geri Allen was a master of emoting and expression. When conveying the ideal of universal love and connection, she was a pure channel. We are lucky to have had her on the planet.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
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‘Skin’
Melvis Santa, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist
When I first heard Geri Allen’s “Skin,” I said to myself: If I ever become a jazz pianist, this is how I would like to sound. Later I got to meet her, to see her give a workshop and perform at a community space in Bed-Stuy, and I got to know her personally. I remember her kindness, and her dedication to making everybody feel included when she taught, no matter their skill level. At one point, I actually asked Geri what had inspired “Skin.” I thought it was going to be a reference to the connection to the African continent and the Black experience. She said, yes, it’s that, but it’s also about the human experience: It was a metaphor more for the connection between every single human being, and the closeness represented by the skin as an organ. That opened my mind to how much of an artistic sensibility she brought to everything she did. I thought: Of course her playing sounds otherworldly, her sensibility is so fine.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
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‘Printmakers’
Kris Davis, pianist
In just over eight minutes, Geri Allen presents eight distinct themes in this composition for piano trio, flowing seamlessly from one to the next — each one strong enough to stand as a composition in its own right. Every section has its own danceable groove, beautifully shaped by Andrew Cyrille and Anthony Cox. I especially love the moment when the trio plays a group improvisation starting at 1:04. They seem to hover on the edge, searching for a way forward together. “Printmakers” inspired me to write a multi-sectional composition for my own trio titled “Run the Gauntlet.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
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‘Dream Time’
Nicholas Payton, trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist
If I had to pick one track to break one in to listening to Geri, it would be “Dream Time” from her album “Twylight.” I think it has elements of all the things that made her so special. It’s circular, which many of her compositional ideas embrace. It’s dance-oriented, which is another through line in her music. It’s also both electric and acoustic. It also pump-fakes at being odd meter. She really plays with subdivision within the bar to make you feel like the “one” is sometimes in a different place than what it is. She’s a genius, and I don’t throw that term around lightly.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
The post 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Geri Allen appeared first on New York Times.
