Word: allene
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...