<div align="right"><font color="#808080"><strong>Media Contact:</strong><br>
Marci Janas, Director of Conservatory Communications<br>
440-775-8328 (office); <a href="mailto:marci.janas@oberlin.edu" target="_blank">marci.janas@oberlin.edu</a> </font></div>
<p align="center"><br>
<strong><font color="#800000" face="Times New Roman" size="5">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<br>
</font></strong></p>
<p align="center"><strong><font color="#800000" face="Times New Roman" size="3"><em>Allen's Drummer, Kassa Overall, is an Oberlin Graduate; <br>
Event is Part of Oberlin's Celebration of Black History Month</em></font></strong></p>
<div align="right"> </div>
<p>
</p><font size="2">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.<br>
<br> 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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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 <a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/" target="_blank">www.oberlin.edu</a>.<br>
<br>
<strong>Geri Allen </strong><br>
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. <br>
<br>
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 <em>Sound Museum</em>, a work in two volumes ("Three Women" and "Hidden Man"), for Verve in 1996. Her own recordings include <em>The Printmakers, The Nurturer, Maroons, Twenty-One, </em>and <em>Eyes</em> <em>in the Back of Your Head </em>(Blue Note); <em>Twylight</em> and <em>The Gathering</em> (Verve); and <em>The Life of a Song</em> and <em>Timeless Portraits and Dreams </em>(Telarc). Of <em>Timeless Portraits</em>,
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."<br>
<br> 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 <em>Refractions, Flying Toward the Sound</em>, and Allen will perform the work throughout the 2009-11 concert season in major museums and concert settings internationally.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Allen is Associate Professor of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.<br>
<br>
<strong>Kassa Overall </strong><br>
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. </font><font size="2">Overall, who began performing with Geri Allen in 2006, also tours with her internationally.</font><br>
<font size="2"><br>
<strong>Kenny Davis</strong><br>
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 <em>Blue Light Till Dawn</em>),
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.<br>
<br>
<strong>Maurice Chestnut</strong><br>
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 <em>Bring In 'Da Noise, Bring In</em> <em>'Da Funk</em>, <em>Improvography</em>, <em>Classical Savion</em>, <em>Tappin' Into Monk</em>, <em>Invitation to the Dancer</em>
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 <em>Star Ledger</em>.
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.<br>
<br>
<strong>About Jazz at Oberlin</strong><br>
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.<br>
<strong><br>
About the Oberlin Conservatory of Music</strong><br>
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 <em>Washington Post</em>,
its alumni have gone on to achieve illustrious careers in all aspects
of the serious music world. For more information about Oberlin, please
visit <a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/" target="_blank">www.oberlin.edu</a>.<br>
<br>
<br>
<strong>CALENDAR LISTING<br>
Thursday, February 12, 2009, 8 PM</strong><br>
The Geri Allen Trio with<br>
Tap Dancer Maurice Chestnut<br>
<em>Program will be announced from the stage</em><br>
<br>
FINNEY CHAPEL<br>
90 North Professor Street<br>
Oberlin, Ohio<br>
FREE <br>
Call 440-775-6933 for more information<br>
<a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/" target="_blank">http://www.oberlin.edu</a><br>
<br>
Media Contact Only:<br>
Marci Janas, Director of Conservatory Communications<br>
440-775-8328 (office); 440-667-2724 (cell); <a href="mailto:marci.janas@oberlin.edu" target="_blank">marci.janas@oberlin.edu</a><br>
<br>
<br>
</font><br>
<div align="center">
<p>###</p></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Marci Janas<br>Director of Conservatory Communications<br> and Editor, Oberlin Conservatory Magazine<br>Oberlin Conservatory of Music<br>39 West College Street<br>Oberlin, OH 44074<br>
<a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/con">www.oberlin.edu/con</a><br>Voice: 440.775.8328<br>Fax: 440.775.5457<br><a href="mailto:marci.janas@oberlin.edu">marci.janas@oberlin.edu</a><br>