Geri Allen est partie rejoindre Ornette Coleman
When I first moved back to NY in the 80’s it was a very different time. Nowadays everybody knows and loves Cecil, the AACM, Ornette. (And critics who hated on all that back then make like they never said that now). Back then if you were left of center at all you were avant-garde, a nasty and curiously non-descriptive adjective which signified to many that you played strident free and were incapable of anything else. Of course there were many musicians living that out, and many of them could be equally close-minded. Just bothering to write your own music made you avant-garde, playing a beat that wasn’t swing or an inauthentic latin beat made you avant-garde. Liking or playing something classical made you avant garde, and more importantly playing music with someone who was branded as avant made you avant-garde. You couldn’t mix tonal improvisation with free improvisation. Practices that are common now were just not done. One had to be esthetically monogamous. For many of us the answer was just to go ahead and do what we wanted, consequences be damned. Geri negotiated the landscape with real grace. All of us had different answers to the problem. Hers was to quietly do everything well.
Don Byron
Je vais tâcher de retrouver le Silence de Haden avec Geri Allen au piano, une absolue merveille, je tâche de mettre cela en ligne bientôt