Geri Allen: pioneering female jazz pianist, bandleader and actress remembered

‘There’s a point of view that suggests that you can do something much better if you focus on one thing, but it’s my nature to be curious, and to go back and forth between different contexts, such as playing solo, trio and large groups, or using electronic stuff’

Allen released more than 20 albums as a bandleader, many of which featured her own compositions (Rex)

Geri Allen was a musically adventurous jazz pianist and bandleader who played with the leading musicians of her time, from Ornette Coleman to Wayne Shorter, and who furthered the careers of other women in jazz. She was known for her eclectic approach, exploring the traditions of jazz and reaching into some of its more arcane byways.

She portrayed pianist Mary Lou Williams in the 1996 Robert Altman film Kansas City, set in the 1930s, but she also dipped into a variety of other styles, from the Motown music of her native Detroit to electronic music and classical works. “I like to look at the piano as a drum,” she said, “as 88 drums with pitch. Rhythm is the core of my music.”

Allen was one of the leading pianists of her generation and, as the Los Angeles Times critic Don Heckman wrote in 2006, “long overdue for the sort of recognition that accrues for the top level of jazz performers.”

In the 1980s, Allen toured with Mary Wilson, a former member of the Supremes from whom she said she borrowed fashion ideas. A decade later, Allen accompanied another singer from Detroit, jazz singer Betty Carter, and performed on Carter's Grammy Award- winning album Droppin’ Things.

Allen released more than 20 albums as a bandleader, many of which featured her compositions, and she collaborated on recordings with rock guitarist Vernon Reid of Living Colour and jazz masters including bassists Ron Carter, Charlie Haden and Dave Holland and drummers Paul Motian and Jimmy Cobb. In 1996, she became the first acoustic pianist in almost 40 years to record with Ornette Coleman. Their work was documented on two albums, Sound Museum: Hidden Man and Sound Museum: Three Women.

“Why can’t I explore the whole universe of music that's available to me?” Allen said in 1992. “There’s a point of view that suggests that you can do something much better if you focus on one thing, but it’s my nature to be curious, and to go back and forth between different contexts, such as playing solo, trio and large groups, or using electronic stuff.”

Allen also wrote symphonic works, developed theatrical projects and become a prominent jazz educator, first at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington and later at the University of Michigan and Pitt.

Throughout her career, Allen helped rediscover the historical role of women in jazz. She recorded Williams’ Zodiac Suite and often appeared at the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center. She also performed the music of Lil Hardin, pianist on the early recordings of her husband, Louis Armstrong.

“There is a really strong legacy of great female piano players, and women have played really important parts in the history of the music,” Allen told the The Independent in 1998. “The issue of Lil Hardin in Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five is an important one. She was the first piano player in the first major group in jazz, and that’s a big hole left undiscovered.”

Among other ensembles led by Allen in recent years, she often performed with the ACS Trio, an all-female group, with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and Grammy-winning bassist Esperanza Spalding.

“If you want to be true to tradition, you must find your own voice,” Allen said in 1992. “It isn’t just in playing on what’s already there. If you come to this music on its own terms, then you have to come to it on your own terms.”

Geri Antoinette Allen was born in 1957, in Pontiac, Michigan, and grew up in Detroit. Her father was a school principal while her mother worked as a contracts administrator with the federal government. Her parents often played jazz and classical records at home, and Allen began studying the piano when she was seven. She went to Cass Tech, a Detroit high school that produced many other talented musicians, and studied under the trumpeter Marcus Belgrave.

In 1979, Allen became one of the first graduates of Howard’s jazz studies programme, and received a master’s degree in ethnomusicology from Pitt in 1982. Among other projects, she collaborated on musical plays with actress and director S Epatha Merkerson and writer Farah Jasmine Griffin. She also wrote musical tributes honouring civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Her marriage to trumpeter Wallace Roney ended in divorce. Survivors include three children; her father, and a brother.

“What I’m trying to access with these 88 keys,” Allen said in 1992, “is something very individual, very much myself, in the ways that the masters have illustrated for us. And that takes a certain kind of confidence, a humble confidence.”

Geri Allen, jazz musician, born 15 June 1957; died of cancer, 27 June 2017

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