[NEohioPAL] Geri Allen Trio and Tap Dancer Maurice Chestnut to Perform at Oberlin College Feb. 12

[Marci Janas]

*Media Contact:*
Marci Janas, Director of Conservatory Communications
440-775-8328 (office); marci.janas at oberlin.edu


*Acclaimed Jazz Pianist and Composer Geri Allen Brings Her Trio—and Tap
Dancer Maurice Chestnut—to Oberlin College for a Free Concert on Thursday,
Feb. 12
*

*Allen's Drummer, Kassa Overall, is an Oberlin Graduate;
Event is Part of Oberlin's Celebration of Black History Month*


OBERLIN, OHIO (February 4, 2009) —Internationally acclaimed jazz composer
and pianist Geri Allen, said to be the most celebrated jazz pianist of her
generation, brings her award-winning sound—and tap dance prodigy Maurice
Chestnut—to Oberlin College for a free concert by the Geri Allen Trio on
Thursday, February 12, at 8 p.m. in Finney Chapel. The program will be
announced from the stage. The concert is presented with the sponsorship of
Oberlin's Jazz Studies and African American Studies departments.

Joining Allen will be bassist Kenny Davis and drummer Kassa Overall, a 2005
graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music who studied with Assistant
Professor of Jazz Percussion Billy Hart. Allen has another connection to
Oberlin; she participated in tutorial sessions at Detroit's Jazz Development
Workshop with trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, Visiting Professor of Jazz Trumpet
at Oberlin, and the late trumpeter Donald Walden, once a member of Oberlin's
jazz studies faculty.

It is unusual, to say the least, for a jazz combo to feature tap dancing as
part of its program. According to a spokeswoman for Allen, the musician is
constantly seeking to reinvent, to keep her program fresh and engaging to
audiences. Allen had the idea of adding tap to her shows for years, but it
wasn't until she spotted Chestnut, a protégée of Savion Glover, at a
performance in New York City two years ago that she found what she was
looking for. Tap has traditionally been associated with jazz music—think
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and the Harlem Hoofer's Club of the 1920s—but
incorporating it into contemporary jazz music performances is something new,
and Allen can be credited for that.

Finney Chapel is located at 90 North Professor Street, at the corner of
State Routes 511 and 58. The venue is wheelchair accessible and free parking
is available throughout the Oberlin campus. For more information, call
Oberlin's 24-hour Concert Hotline at 440-775-6933, or visit www.oberlin.edu.

*Geri Allen *
Since 1982 Geri Allen has recorded and performed with musicians as diverse
as Ornette Coleman, Charles Lloyd, Sir Simon Rattle, Vernon Reid, Ron
Carter, Mary Wilson and the Supremes, Tony Williams, Charlie Haden, Marianne
Faithful, and Wayne Shorter, among many others.

Grounded in tradition but poised on the cutting edge, Allen was invited by
the legendary Ornette Coleman to record with him—a rare collaboration given
that Coleman had recorded with a pianist only once, 35 years previously. The
sessions produced *Sound Museum*, a work in two volumes ("Three Women" and
"Hidden Man"), for Verve in 1996. Her own recordings include *The
Printmakers, The Nurturer, Maroons, Twenty-One, *and *Eyes* *in the Back of
Your Head *(Blue Note); *Twylight* and *The Gathering* (Verve); and *The
Life of a Song* and *Timeless Portraits and Dreams *(Telarc). Of *Timeless
Portraits*, radio host and cultural commentator Tavis Smiley says: "Jazz
pianist Geri Allen has taken the freedom of jazz and combined it with the
cultural freedom movements that have paralleled the evolution of jazz
itself."

A recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship Award for Music
Composition, Allen has been at work composing an original solo piano piece
celebrating three important pianist-composer-innovators: Cecil Taylor, McCoy
Tyner, and Herbie Hancock. Motema Records will release *Refractions, Flying
Toward the Sound*, and Allen will perform the work throughout the 2009-11
concert season in major museums and concert settings internationally.

Her work as a composer has garnered numerous awards as well as commissions
from organizations such as Lincoln Center, Music Theatre Group, American
Music Theatre Festival, and Stanford University. Most recently, the Walt
Whitman Arts Center and Meet The Composer commissioned "For the Healing of
the Nations", a sacred jazz work that was composed in tribute to the victims
and survivors of the 9/11 tragedy, and which premiered on September 10,
2006.

Allen is Associate Professor of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

*Kassa Overall *
Kassa Overall (OC '05) studied percussion at Oberlin with Billy Hart and
Michael Rosen; his other mentors include the late Elvin Jones, Billy
Higgins, Tutti Heath, and Larry V. Jones. He has toured the world, and
performed with Donald Byrd, Slide Hampton, and Christian McBride, among many
others. He has appeared at such top jazz festivals as Montreux in
Switzerland, North Sea in The Netherlands, and the Detroit
International. Overall,
who began performing with Geri Allen in 2006, also tours with her
internationally.

*Kenny Davis*
A native of Chicago, acoustic and electric bassist Kenny Davis is now a
fixture on the New York jazz scene. He has appeared with such artists as
Freddy Hubbard, Cassandra Wilson (he was a music arranger for a song on her
Grammy Award winning CD *Blue Light Till Dawn*), Abbey Lincoln, Diane
Reeves, and Art Farmer. He has studied with Ron Carter, and earned a
Bachelor of Arts degree in music education from Northeastern Illinois
University and a Master of Music degree from Rutgers University. He teaches
at the University of Connecticut.

*Maurice Chestnut*
Maurice Chestnut, a protégée of Savion Glover, is an original member of the
New Jersey Tap Dance Ensemble. His extensive list of credits includes his
appearance at Carnegie Hall and throughout Europe with the Geri Allen Trio
as a featured soloist, and his performances in productions with Glover such
as *Bring In 'Da Noise, Bring In* *'Da Funk*, *Improvography*, *Classical
Savion*, *Tappin' Into Monk*, *Invitation to the Dancer* and on ABC-TV's
Dancing With The Stars.  The youthful dance virtuoso has been featured on
NPR and was named "one of the 20 New Jersey faces to watch for in the new
century" by the Newark *Star Ledger*. He will be joining opera legend Jessye
Norman for her "Sacred Ellington" concert at Carnegie Hall on March 7, 2009;
Norman discovered Chestnut when he was sitting in with Allen at the Village
Vanguard last December.

*About Jazz at Oberlin*
Oberlin offers a premier undergraduate jazz studies program, chaired by
Professor of African American Music Wendell Logan, that prepares students
for careers as professional jazz musicians and for advanced study in jazz.
The jazz studies faculty includes composers and performers who, in addition
to teaching lessons and coaching ensembles, maintain active performing
careers throughout the world. Numerous Oberlin alumni have achieved success
in the jazz idiom, among them keyboardist Ted Baker; pianist and composer
Stanley Cowell; bassist, composer, and arranger Leon Lee Dorsey; pianist,
arranger, and producer Allen Farnham; bassist Ben Jaffe; composer and
pianist Jon Jang; writer, composer, and saxophonist James McBride; and
trumpeter, trombonist, and composer Michael Mossman.
*
About the Oberlin Conservatory of Music*
The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated amid the
intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the oldest
continuously operating conservatory in the United States. Renowned
internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber and
pronounced a "national treasure" by the *Washington Post*, its alumni have
gone on to achieve illustrious careers in all aspects of the serious music
world. For more information about Oberlin, please visit www.oberlin.edu.


*CALENDAR LISTING
Thursday, February 12, 2009, 8 PM*
The Geri Allen Trio with
Tap Dancer Maurice Chestnut
*Program will be announced from the stage*

FINNEY CHAPEL
90 North Professor Street
Oberlin, Ohio
FREE
Call 440-775-6933 for more information
http://www.oberlin.edu

Media Contact Only:
Marci Janas, Director of Conservatory Communications
440-775-8328 (office); 440-667-2724 (cell); marci.janas at oberlin.edu



 ###


-- 
Marci Janas
Director of Conservatory Communications
and Editor, Oberlin Conservatory Magazine
Oberlin Conservatory of Music
39 West College Street
Oberlin, OH  44074
www.oberlin.edu/con
Voice: 440.775.8328
Fax: 440.775.5457
marci.janas at oberlin.edu
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