Allen's Original Voice Transforms Jazz Tradition

1994 was a triumphant year for jazz pianist Geri Allen. With her presence on two critically acclaimed albums, Allen showed the world that she can play in the company of jazz's most musically intimidating performers and still emerge with her brilliance untarnished.

Allen's performance last week at the Regattabar in Cambridge gave tangible proof that her reputation is well deserved. With bassist Ron Carter and drummer Lenny White, Allen offered listeners five searingly original improvisations on both her own compositions and jazz standards. Allen's performance in Cambridge lived up to the expectations raised by her recent stunning recorded work.

Allen was the pianist on a live date recorded with vocalist Betty Carter that was released on Verve this summer. The album, Feed the Fire, is titled after a Geri Allen composition--a rare sign of tribute from Dame Carter, who is widely known as one of the toughest and most critical taskmasters in jazz. Carter's tyrannical ways were amply demonstrated in her own appearance at the Regattabar last year, when she lambasted her bass player on stage for not getting the changes right. Unlike the poor bassist, Allen was not cowed by Carter's aggressiveness. The level of tension during the London concert at which feed the Fire was recorded actually seemed to stoke her creative furnaces. Her solos are a fascinating commentary on Carter's uniquely expressive vocal style.

Allen also recorded a trio album for Blue Note last year, Twenty one. On this album, Allen is heard accompanied by--and sometimes struggling with--the deafening racket of grand masters Ron Carter and Tony Williams on bass and drums, respectively. For some reason, the producer of Twenty One, Teo Macero (who produced all of the great Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk albums on Columbia) ,chose to have an incredibly bass-heavy mix, which, coupled with Williams's tooth-rattling cymbal crashes, threatens to drown out the subtleties of Allen's phrasing and unique harmonic conception. It is to Allen's credit that the clarity of her lines and the sharpness of her unceasing string of musical ideas are able to penetrate the intimidating throbbing set up by Carter and Williams.

The occasional funk beat thrown in by William (a holdover from his days as leader of the jazz-rock band Lifetime) contributes to the tough, no-nonsense feel of Twenty One. Even ancient jazz standards such as "If I Should Lose You" and "Tea for Two" are played with a matter-of-fact feel that seems to imply irony.

Allen's solos are direct, her lines concise. Although her playing is devoid of excess ornamentation, the flow of both rhythmic and melodic ideas is unceasing. Allen has masterfully incorporated the innovations of such challenging pianists as Thelonious Monk, Andrew Hill and Herbie Hancock. All three of these pianists share Allen's distinctly unsentimental aesthetic.

The hippest cut on Twenty One is "Lullaby of the Leaves." On this old standard, Allen plays knifing runs over an arrangement by another legendary female jazz pianist, Mary Lou Williams. Even on a lullaby, the mood of the album is not at all conciliatory. Allen's soloing has a nasty edge.

The unsettling rhythmic complexity of her remarkably independent left hand is especially apparent on the album's only solo track, "In the Middle," an original composition. This is masterful solo piano work in the tradition of Monk or, even more accurately, Allen's fellow-Brooklynite Randy Weston. The sense of modernity and African-American culture that "In the Middle" conveys is a testament to the evocative power of Allen's playing.

Conveying images of the modern African-American experience through music is an idea as old as jazz itself. Recent years have seen a diminishing of the cold, hard appraisal of reality that marked the work of such greats as Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Jackie McLean. Geri Allen continues and updates this tradition of combining passionate music with commentary on the world around her.

A survey of song titles from her 1992 Blue Note album, Maroons, reflects the contemporary images that inform Allen's playing: "Mad Money," "Feed the Fire," "Brooklyn Bound `A'," and "Bed-Sty." The liner notes to that album include Greg Tate's poem "Maroon To Reign (terrain)," which echoes Allen's preoccupation with the troubled world of today's Black America.

the next voice you hear will be ordering coffee regular and heading for target practice remember the alamo remember the aryan nation another assata preparing for jihad "it's shaping up to be that kind of millenium up in here"

Allen's is a conception which not only resuscitates but transforms modern jazz.