Pianist Geri Allen – RIP at age 60

Geri Allen – Composer / Pianist / Bandleader

Jun 12, 1957 – June 27, 2017

Edited from NPR and WBGO’s David Adler:

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.  The cause was cancer, said Ora Harris, her manager of 30 years.

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 many others.  Recent collaborations with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, included separate trios featuring bassist Esperanza Spalding and tenor saxophonist David Murray.

Geri Antoinette Allen was born June 12, 1957 in Pontiac, Mich., and raised in Detroit. 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 protégé of the late trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, and she was also mentored by the late drummer Roy Brooks.  She mentored saxophonist Kenny Garrett and violinist Regina Carter, among many others.

Allen was one of the first students to complete a jazz studies degree from Howard University (1979).  She earned an M.A. in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1982, and she was the director of jazz studies there for the last four years.  She was artistic director for The Carr Center in Detroit.

Early in her career, she sustained herself touring with former Supreme Mary Wilson.  Allen made a series of statements with the vanguardist M-Base Collective, spearheaded by Steve Coleman. 

The most recent recording in her name was the 2013 Motema release, Grand River Crossings: Motown & Motor City Inspirations, a hometown homage, but also a reflection on the porous boundaries of black music.

In her own work, Allen often sought to broaden her reference points and sonic palette, featuring the Atlanta Jazz Chorus, the electric and acoustic guitar of Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, and tap dancers Lloyd Storey and Maurice Chestnut. She shed light on the legacy of the still underappreciated pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams on Zodiac Suite: Revisited.

Along with a Guggenheim Fellowship, 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 Jazz Par Prize, a highly prestigious Danish honor.  She received an honorary doctorate degree from Berklee College of Music, and the 2014 Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Jazz Legacy Award.

Allen is survived by her father Mount V. Allen, Jr.; her brother; and three children. She was married for a time to the trumpeter Wallace Roney, and she accompanied him on several recordings.

Read the full article by David Adler here:  http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/06/27/534409838/geri-allen-pianist-composer-and-educator-dies-at-60