Geri Allen
Jazz pianist who was noted for her mercurial playing style
GERI ALLEN, who has died aged 60, was a pianist of great talent and broad interests. Although most celebrated as a jazz musician, she refused to be confined by any convenient label. “Why can’t I explore the whole universe that’s available to me?” she demanded during an interview. “It’s my nature to be curious.”
Geri Antoinette Allen was born at Pontiac, Michigan, on June 12 1957, and brought up in Detroit. Her father was a school principal and her mother a contract administrator with the US Government. She attended Cass Technical High School, as had many famous jazz musicians before her. Unlike most of them, however, her jazz education came via college, rather than show business. She was among the first to complete a degree in Jazz Studies at Howard University, Washington DC, and followed this with a Master’s in Ethnomusicology at the University of Pittsburgh.
After further study in New York, notably with the pianist Kenny Barron, she joined a loose collective of like-minded young musicians, known as M-base, and in 1984 recorded her first album, The Printmakers, with a trio. The following year saw her first solo album, entitled Home Grown.
Altogether, Geri Allen released more than 20 albums under her own name. Among the most admired are those with small groups, mainly trios, in which her mercurial piano style strikes a spark in the playing of her companions. This is certainly the case with Etudes (1987) and In the Year of the Dragon (1989), in both of which she is joined by bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Paul Motian, and The Life of a Song (2014), with Dave Holland and Jack Dejohnette.
Geri Allen once said that she liked to think of the piano as a percussion instrument, with the keyboard as 88 little drums, all at different pitches. Perhaps this idea commended itself to Ornette Coleman, famously wary of the piano as a kind of harmonic dictator. They certainly played very happily together on a pair of albums, entitled The Sound Museum, in 1996.
In the previous year, Geri Allen was awarded the renowned Jazzpar prize, presented annually in Denmark by an international jury, and the only jazz prize with real money (about $30,000) attached. At 38, she was the youngest-ever recipient and the only woman. The Jazzpar is now defunct, for lack of sponsorship.
She took an interest in jazz of all styles and periods, and could play them convincingly. Her aim was not to create perfect imitations, but to capture their essence. In particular, she was keen to reawaken interest in the work of women jazz musicians of the past. Two whom she promoted in particular were the pianists Mary Lou Williams, whose Zodiac Suite she recorded, and Lil Hardin, Louis Armstrong’s first wife and a formidable musician in her own right.
Beginning in 2003, Geri Allen taught for 10 years at the University of Michigan. At the time of her death she was Associate Professor of Music and Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She was also artistic director at the Carr Centre for African-american cultural arts in Detroit. In 2013, she paid homage to Detroit, her home town, in a solo piano album of Motown songs, Grand River Crossings.
Her early death from cancer brought to an end a career in full flow. Along with her academic concerns, she was performing regularly with two trios, both including the drummer Terry Lyne Carrington. The first was completed by the tenor saxophonist David Murray, and the other, the all-female ACS Trio, by the dynamic double bass player Esperanza Spalding.
Geri Allen’s marriage to the trumpeter Wallace Roney ended in divorce. She is survived by two daughters and a son.
Geri Allen, born June 12 1957, died June 27 2017