# The brilliant pianist and composer Geri Allen: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2017/11/14/the-brilliant-pianist-and-composer-geri-allen-video/
- Published: 2017-11-14T22:06:15+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Geri Allen complained that she was “feeling sick to my stomach … in disbelief.”
Earlier that morning, she’d received news that the Detroit Public Schools planned
to fire a number of arts and music teachers in an ill-advised budget-cutting move,
including the orchestra conductor and music teacher at Allen’s own alma mater, Cass
Technical High School.**

That visceral reaction should come as no surprise to anyone who knew Allen. In the
wake of her passing on June 27, at age 60, she’s been rightly celebrated as a pioneering
pianist, an artist whose work encompassed an unusually wide swath of jazz history
and offered a model for the 21st-century jazz musician that deftly balanced tradition
and innovation. But she was also possessed by an unmatched passion for education,
an intense dedication to passing along a torch she felt she’d inherited from forebears
like Mary Lou Williams and Dr. Billy Taylor.

That intensity was admirable but could also prove daunting. I felt the brunt of 
it in the wake of our conversation that July day at the Montclair Art Museum. A 
routine fact-check email turned into a somewhat contentious back-and-forth, as Allen
attempted to rewrite many of her quotes, expanding some of them to three or four
times their original length. It was an impossible request to honor, given ethical
concerns and space constraints, and made for a few uneasy dialogues. But what was
evident throughout was just how extensive and developed her thoughts on music education
were, how strongly she felt about them and how powerfully she wanted them communicated.

At the time of her death, Allen was the director of jazz studies at the University
of Pittsburgh. Prior to assuming that mantle in 2013, she’d served as a faculty 
member at Howard University, New England Conservatory, Montclair State University,
the New School and the University of Michigan, where she taught for 10 years.

Allen grew up in a family of educators; her father spent more than three decades
as a teacher and administrator in the Detroit Public Schools system, following in
the footsteps of his mother, who taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Tennessee. 
She proudly pointed to the legacy of work with children that ran through generations
of her extended family, and included teachers as well as doctors, ministers and 
social workers.

Determined to pursue a life in music, Allen initially rebelled against the educational
path, but was inevitably drawn back in by the example established by her own mentors:
her childhood piano teacher, Patricia Wilhelm, who guided her from the age of 7 
all the way through high school; trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, a Detroit legend who
instilled valuable lessons at Cass High and on the bandstand; Billy Eckstine Orchestra
pianist John Malachi, with whom she studied at Howard University; Nathan Davis, 
her predecessor at Pitt, who widened her perspective through ethnomusicology classes;
and David Baker, whose instructional books led her to think more deeply about tracing
knowledge to its source.

At the same time, she was learning the old-fashioned way, in the often-cutthroat
environment found in Detroit clubs. In her gentle but stern way, Allen tried to 
integrate those two approaches, coupling the intellectual approach of classroom 
learning with the trial-by-fire tests of mettle offered by real-world experience.“
I’m integrating both ideals,” Allen explained, pointing to the Mary Lou Williams-
style piano salons she organized for her students. “It’s like a laboratory of scientists
all working on this idea for a new breakthrough, all coming with their own ideas,
all having something of great value to share with each other. It’s competitive but
friendly at the same time. I think that peer relationship is very powerful.”

[⌊Geri Allen⌉⌊Geri Allen⌉[

“[Her teaching method] was more like an apprenticeship approach,” said trumpeter
Sean Jones, who crossed Allen’s path both on the bandstand and in the classroom 
at various points. “A lot of times in higher academia you get folks who teach from
a textbook, and it’s really easy to plug and play when you do that. Geri was teaching
from her life experience. The people who know what life is like on the road know
what it is to play on a high level, know what it is to struggle to get to a certain
level of success—those cats are the real examples. That’s what Geri was.”

“Geri was very conscious of passing on knowledge, and at the same time she was very
conscious of making sure that younger musicians understood the legacy and hierarchy
in jazz,” added drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, a longtime friend and collaborator
who wasn’t yet a teenager when she first played with Allen.

A Ph.D. student in jazz studies at Pitt, Irene Monteverde served as one of Allen’s
teaching assistants for the last two years. Watching Allen lecture to classes of
more than 300 on the history of jazz, she observed that wide-ranging approach firsthand.“
She always wanted to pay respect to her mentors,” Monteverde described. “But it 
was important to her not just to regurgitate the history of jazz but to make it [
relevant to] everyday life. She wanted to connect with the students on a very real
level about what’s happening now.”

That included not only music but technology. Allen was keenly interested in incorporating
the latest classroom innovations, becoming an advocate for the real-time networking
tech of Internet2, through which she played and taught with colleagues at other 
institutions, including Carrington and pianist Jason Moran. In that way she took
advantage of opportunities offered by the same cultural upheavals she felt the need
to fight against—specifically the new devices and technologies that seemed to be
isolating people by absorbing them into narcissistic “social” networks. “The world
has changed so much,” she told me. “We really don’t have to deal with each other
so much anymore. We’re challenged with what the whole idea of human interaction 
means. And a big part of what this music is about is the reality of interacting 
with people.”

Bassist Esperanza Spalding is usually hesitant about taking a “women-in-jazz” approach
to discussing her place in the music, but she readily admits that Allen has been
a powerful role model in that context. “I always think it’s not about being a woman,”
Spalding said, “but then I realize that I was looking to Geri specifically for guidance
because she is a woman. I don’t know why that’s true, and I’m a little embarrassed
to admit it, but honestly, knowing that she did it gives me confidence. I can’t 
go into the details of why because I don’t fully understand, but I do know that 
stepping out into the patriarchal world that we live in feels a little less scary
having a reference like Geri.”

Allen took that role especially seriously, particularly in her capacity as the program
director for the annual All-Female Jazz Residency of the New Jersey Performing Arts
Center (NJPAC). “A big part of how she wanted to make sure the future was educated[
was seeing to it] that women had a sense of place and agency and power,” said Moran.“[
One of the most important aspects of her legacy] is what she represents for the 
African-American woman in jazz. She made sure that stayed firmly in people’s eyes
and that you had to be able to reckon with that history. She wanted to make sure
that history was not going to be deleted or erased on her watch; she was going to
put the work in to make sure that you would know Mary Lou Williams’ name.”

Moran recalled one of his earliest experiences with Allen’s music, when he brought
a date to the Village Vanguard “as a test to see if she could handle Geri Allen.”(
The verdict: “They couldn’t, so they weren’t the one for me.”) While that evening
didn’t net Moran a soul mate, it did reinforce a feeling that he’d sensed about 
Allen’s distinctive approach, that she paved the way for a generation of pianists
who wanted to incorporate the vast sweep of history into a single style. In that
sense, she’s been a mentor for many of today’s most progressive musicians.

“Any student with half a brain would understand that she would dig into a bunch 
of different bags,” Moran said, “whether it was Mary Lou Williams or Cecil Taylor,
playing with Betty Carter or playing with M-Base, writing her own music or being
the only pianist Ornette Coleman would hire in later years. Any student who has 
future plans for a career, she marked it out for you: You should pay honor to the
people around you and above you; you should share with the ones below you; you should
treat your bandstand as one that is open; and you should play music that challenges.
Now that she’s gone, I realize there was not another pianist in the history of the
music like her.”

[⌊Esperanza Spalding⌉⌊Esperanza Spalding⌉[

Spalding, who worked alongside Allen and Carrington in recent years in the ACS trio,
didn’t hesitate to call Allen a mentor, even as she meditated on what the term really
means. “I felt very reverential towards Geri and would defer to her before my own
call on any musical question,” she said. “But we were so busy making music together
that I never even thought to assume a disciple mode. I don’t think I really took
advantage of the potential for her to be an active mentor, but you don’t have to
talk about something explicitly to be teaching about it. Her approach to people 
on and off the bandstand was a constant education. She encouraged me to do more 
than I thought I could do, just by celebrating what was happening and acknowledging
it. She would comment on things I didn’t even know I was doing, and that encouraged
me to seek further.”

One of Monteverde’s final opportunities to spend time with Allen came when the pianist
asked her young TA, who’d formerly studied at Siena Jazz, to accompany her during
a European tour with Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava. It proved to be another instance
of Allen’s subtle method of leading by example, showing her student how to maintain
a down-to-earth demeanor in the face of the challenges that life on the road presents.“
She was like a friend and a mom and a teacher,” Monteverde said. “She was always
calm and soft-spoken, but you knew that she meant business.”

Spalding agreed that Allen’s demeanor could be as influential as her artistry: “
She never got perturbed by people or by situations. She interfaced with everyone
from a place of openness and humility. She would leave a lot of room for people 
to be themselves, and she didn’t judge them. It’s so encouraging to think that her
students were getting a dose of all her musicianship and that model of humanity.”

Allen closed our conversation back in 2010 by musing on the point made by many veteran
musicians, especially those deeply involved in education. She continued to consider
herself a student, and in her case the cliché rang truer than with many of her peers.
Unique among them, Allen seemed to continue to hear, absorb and learn from the discoveries
made by successive generations of young innovators, not just the forebears she championed.

It’s been valuable to me, in the months since her passing, to reflect on the quote
that ended that original story, words of wisdom that resonate all the more deeply
now that she’s gone. “We have to be students of life and be very careful as we move
through it,” she concluded. “There’s always some kind of unexpected moment that 
happens each and every day, and you have to adjust. Music is like that. You can’t
ever take it for granted.”

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