Category Archives: Geri Allen Symposium at Harvard Feb 2018

Timeless Portraits : Saturday at Harvard, honoring Geri Allen

After a long Friday night concert (the SATURDAY night concert is here don’t miss it), people came for second day of the panels, beginning with Geri Allen as Scholar and Educator. Ingrid Monson moderated.

Monson, Michael Heller, Aaron Johnson, Mount Allen, Yoko Suzuki .. Heller, Johnson and Suzuki were Allen’s colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh .. Mount Allen is Geri’s brother .. Melissa Blackall Photography, thanks to Hutchins Center at Harvard University

Mount Allen III is Director of Operations at SFJAZZ in San Francisco. He described “Geri and Mount Allen’s Scheme for World Domination through Global Literacy” – strategizing to synch up performers in distant studios and deliver a concert to audiences at minority-serving institutions. He calls it “the new underground railroad.” Geri was on board; she always wanted to bring opportunity to African-American students. High tech/low tech: she also loved working with tap dancers. As Michael Heller, her colleague at the University of Pittsburgh,  said “Geri could track so many things at once.” Together Allen and Heller acquired and processed the Erroll Garner Collection for U Pitt. Heller and colleague Aaron Johnson described Geri as a motivator. “She roped people in to doing things,” said Johnson. “She would make you speak your intentions,” said Heller, and then publicly restate them on your behalf. Saxophonist Yoko Suzuki was a fellow teacher and close colleague who described Allen as “inclusive, accessible . . . . She broke down music into parts.” Johnson chimed in “No graduate student left behind.”

Allen also created the summer jazz camp for girls at Montclair State University in New Jersey; it continues at NJPAC in Newark.

Bandmates Esperanza Spalding (moderator), Terri Lyne Carrington, Kenny Davis, Carmen Lundy, Kassa Overall discuss Allen’s Music and Vision

The Working with Geri Allen panel sat in a sunbeam! I think this photo shows bassist Kenny Davis telling us how he gave Geri a Zoom recorder to replace an ancient cassette device. It was as though “… I bought her a Porsche!” Carmen Lundy played a personal video compiled from phone-captured “footage” of Carmen, Geri and others traveling in Europe. For a moment we heard Geri speak, standing at the foot of Montmartre, commenting on Paris. Beautiful seat-of-the-pants production, Carmen! Citing “Drummer’s Song” (Open on All Sides in the Middle from 1987, Twenty-One from 1994), Terri Lyne Carrington noted Allen’s “layering of phrases so you don’t get tired” — “we became a band that’s real stretchy” in drummer Kassa Overall’s words — and described her music as having “the beauty of a rose and the aggression of a tornado.”

Monson, Vijay Iyer, Don Byron, Dwight Andrews

As a panelist for Geri Allen’s Place in History, Don Byron’s description of Tower Records on lower Broadway in the mid 1980s was accurate. The low-ceilinged jazz department, the politics of how LPs were sorted and filed, the knowledgeable salespeople, the stress when they put your album in the wrong bin. That’s the era in which Allen and Byron made their New York entrances. (Both eventually moved elsewhere.) The two are on the soundtrack to the 1996 film Kansas City and, coincidentally, share a 2004 NYT review of Byron’s Ivey-Divey (Blue Note) and Allen’s The Life of a Song (Telarc). Allen recorded on the Blue Note, Verve, Telarc and Motéma labels.

In 2013 and 2016, Allen musically directed two stage productions, “Celebrating the Great Jazz Women of the Apollo” and “A Conversation with Mary Lou Williams.” She asked actress S. Epatha Merkerson of Law and Order to direct the shows and Farah Jasmine Griffin to write. On the closing panel, Merkerson spoke of how the three brainstormed to develop scripts and staging, how Geri loved to incorporate new performers – an organist, a dancer – at the last minute, how working with Allen diversified Merkerson’s career. Allen’s long-time manager Ora Harris, saxophonist Tia Fuller, Carrington and Lundy completed this discussion. After dinner came the Geri Allen Tribute concert. The panelists became performers, and there’s a video on the WGBH Facebook page, here. Go see it! Below is the set list; neither songs nor performers are named from the stage. The music speaks.

Stage manager’s marked-up set list, photo by BP

Geri Allen was born and raised in Detroit. She graduated from Howard University and earned her Master’s in Ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh. She wrote her thesis about Eric Dolphy, and her composition “Dolphy’s Dance” is on the above  list. She composed from life. Allen had three children who are ever-present in her music. She led or played on at least 50 albums with several generations of artists. She performed internationally on esteemed stages. She actively sought  to play for children, older people, people at church. I wish we had more documentation of her in these community situations.

But I don’t want to wish, I want to pivot the narrative now and in the future. As Farah Jasmine Griffin challenged us in her keynote speech, it’s possible to “Imagine a story of jazz in which Geri is central from now on.” We should, we can and I hope we will.

Timeless Portraits : Friday


We who love contemporary jazz have been mourning the death of Geri Allen (1958-2018). Yet Geri Allen was always emerging, adding new dimensions. And it’s still true. Earlier this month at Harvard University, a free and open festival/symposium entitled Timeless Portraits gave time and space to celebrate her music, life, spirit and legacy. My friend Ingrid Monson was a conference organizer and I happily attended.

Keynote speaker Farah Jasmine Griffin, scholar and Columbia University Professor, wrote the notes for Allen’s Flying Toward the Sound solo piano album (Motéma 2010). The visual artwork came from Carrie Mae Weems who – later in the day, accompanied by Esperanza Spalding on bass and Terri Lyne Carrington on drums – presented her still images and video of Geri. Flight is a metaphor for freedom, Griffin said. “Where Geri led, love and beauty followed.”

Panelists Jason Moran, Craig Taborn, Kris Davis and Vijay Iyer (left to right) addressed the topic of Geri Allen and the Piano. My notes contain their confessions – “I am fully influenced by,” “very directly,” “I have plagiarized” – and descriptive phrases for musical selections that they played for us – “as though she has three hands!” “flip[s] a phrase,” “wastes no time,” “she’s dancing!”

Excerpted at this panel: “Lonely Woman” from Etudes (Charlie Haydn, Paul Motian, Allen, Soul Note 1987), “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” from Allen’s Grand River Crossings (Motéma 2012), “Skin” from Twylight (Minor Music 1989).

At the night-time concert in Paine Hall, each pianist played alone and in duets with the other three. Practically no words were spoken. Jason Moran’s unbound interpretation of “Life Every Voice and Sing” made me think of war, of Syria. Of how Geri Allen – so self-possessed – made emotional and powerful music. Kris Davis and Craig Taborn concluded with Davis’s transcription of “Black Man” ( from Home Grown 1985). On paper Davis uses three staves, as though Allen is playing with three hands. “You hear her hands,” Vijay Iyer said, “… hear that mind at work” in Taborn’s phrase.

I do not have the Friday night set list. And the sequence of pianists alone then in duets is a brain teaser. Please, someone, send it! I will share.

In the next post, I’ll start with Saturday, February 17, 8:30am, the Symposium, Geri Allen as Scholar and Educator.

A Geri Allen discography is here.

Timeless Portraits : Honoring Geri Allen

Members of Geri’s community gathered at Harvard University to appreciate her as pianist and collaborator, scholar and educator, visionary and historical figure and more. The symposium agenda is here.

The Friday night concert, Pianos for Geri, featured four players, one and two at a time. Voices and instruments expanded the sound on Saturday for Geri: Genus, Grace and Fire. Set lists to come.

Great thanks to organizer Ingrid Monson and her colleagues – Terri Lyne Carrington, Vijay Iyer, Esperanza Spalding – and all who participated.

I’ll share some notes soon.