Geri Allen Trio
‘The Printmakers’
Minor Music 

One of the all-time classic albums of modern jazz piano, “The Printmakers” by the Geri Allen Trio, marks its 40th anniversary in 2024. From the very first note, it’s evident that this is a superior statement by a master musician, one who reconsiders nearly all of the “givens” that we expect of a jazz pianist. 

Let’s start with the basic structure of your typical jazz performance: Customarily, we begin with the theme, then we hear the usually-improvised variations, and, in many cases, the improvisation gets further and further away from the melody with which the musicians began. This general outline often also applies to the large-scale evolution of the music itself; in 1917, jazz musicians generally stayed fairly close to the melody; by 1967, there was an entire faction of musicians who made a point to completely avoid any conventional definition of melody.

Sometimes we expect jazz in the postmodern era — everything since the arrival of Coltrane, Ornette, and Cecil Taylor — to follow that format: to start in one place and then consistently get further and further “out.”

Geri Allen’s “The Printmakers” reverses the equation, at least at first. It starts with what might be called abstract sound; in fact, we’re not quite sure what it is: A ball bouncing? Popcorn popping? The popping doesn’t quite have a regular beat, but it meanders — until it encounters, and then steps aside, for a drum interlude by Andrew Cyrille. This is, as you’d expect, pure rhythm, in the extreme. After a minute or so of drums, we go into the full trio, including bassist Anthony Cox, playing an unbelievably catchy melody.   Allen’s tonal and rhythmic strokes evoke an Afro-Caribbean diaspora sound, reminiscent of Dollar Brand or Monty Alexander.

Recorded in Germany in 1984, “The Printmakers” was the first album as a leader by Allen (1956-2017). By that point, she had already graduated — as had her colleague, Cassandra Wilson — from the loose collective of players associated with alto saxophonist/bandleader Steve Coleman that he called M-Base. Apart from the music of Mr. Coleman and some of the individual members, it was hard to get a bead on exactly what that term was supposed to mean. M-Base was never as clearly defined a movement, say, as what was referred to, and not necessarily metaphorically, as the “Lennie Tristano school” of a few decades earlier. Yet maybe that was part of the point, too: All the major players of M-Base were excellent musicians who made excellent music in their own way. 

The second tune on “The Printmakers,” “Eric” (subtitled “For Eric Dolphy”), starts slowly, with a few chords that serve as an introduction. Allen plays something that might best be described as a pattern of notes rather than a distinctive tune, and she starts running laps around it even as she’s laying it out for the first time. She slows down into a more stately, ballad-like line, which gradually opens up into a lovely, shimmering melody, one that makes me think of rippling water. When she drifts into tempo, we then hear Anthony Cox’s bass (electric, from what I can tell) playing behind her.  When it moves into something more like a jazzy beat, we notice the subtle presence of Mr. Cyrille, with his beautiful brushstrokes on Geri’s lyrical canvas.

If “Eric” is mostly piano and one barely notices the bass and drums, “Running As Fast As You Can…TGTH” is all about the trio. It starts off with a drum passage, and then Mr. Cyrille is joined by Mr. Cox, and finally, about 90 seconds in, Allen enters. This is one of several pieces we might describe as free jazz. In Allen’s case especially, the term refers to a means of creation. On “Running,” like with most so-called free piano, the music is rambling and at times almost chaotic, but there’s always at least something that the listener can follow. There’s always something more than just total randomness.

Alas, “Running As Fast As You Can…TGTH” doesn’t have a subtitle that might communicate the intentions of the composer. “M’s Heart,” which concludes the first side of the original LP,  is subtitled “In Memory Of Mrs. Barbara Jean Allen,” referring to the pianist-composer’s mother. This too sounds like a free jazz piece — and it’s completely solo — but in a very different way. Here there is a distinct melody, played in a way that’s easy to follow, yet it does sound completely improvised, as if she hadn’t worked out anything at all before she sat down at the keyboard to play it. This chaotic messaging conjures visually a running away, out of fear, from something rather than toward a destination or goal.

“Printmakers (altosaxophonistic poetic type printmakers)” opens side two, with the full trio; it begins with a thorny but distinct melody that gets more twisty and gnarly as it progresses. Then, about three minutes in, she resolves into a funky, followable tune that sounds like Horace Silver or Vince Guaraldi. The piece continues, getting darker and more discordant; then it resolves into another tune. “Printmakers” could be at least five different pieces in one, all of which seem to exist in stark contrast to each other. When Mr. Cyrille plays a solo in the middle, it sounds like a direct extension, albeit played on drums, of the twisty melody line that Allen has been developing thus far. When Allen returns, it does sound like the expected “tutti” at the end of a solo and the return of the full ensemble, in this case the trio, and that’s the closest thing to a conventional moment on the track.  Might “altosaxophonistic” also refer to Dolphy?

“Andrew” is subtitled “(For Andrew Cyrille)” but is not the kind of loud, percussive piece of the sort we might expect to find dedicated to a drummer; rather, it’s a deeply introspective, even lyrical ballad. In fact, we notice Mr. Cyrille less than the other players here. Allen sets up a highly rhythmic, often percussive left-hand repeating pattern, weaving through the piece several different themes to which Mr. Cyrille’s drum figures are closely, almost adhesively, attached. Mr. Cox’s bass figures are not quite as closely committed but are beautifully complementary, and then Mr. Cyrille is rewarded with some untethered solo time in the latter half. 

Another solo piece, “When Kayuba Dances,” almost immediately gives the impression of speeding up, though the left hand figures remain well-anchored in a steady tempo. It seems to start fast, gets faster, and ends faster still — I pity the dancer who tries to keep up with it. It’s essentially the same melody throughout, which grows more dense and then occasionally lightens up as it proceeds. It also seems completely improvised; for one thing, it doesn’t really have an ending — it just seems to stop.

Mr. Cox takes out his bow to play arco on the final piece, “D And V (For Daddy And Vernie),” an obvious dedication to her father, Mount Allen Jr. (and possibly also to Vernon Reid). It’s a lovely and, yes, lyrical duo that provides a satisfying ending to what has been a very busy album, full of new ideas and new intentions. At a mere two minutes, “D And V” leaves us wanting more.

Fortunately, Geri Allen, who was 28 at the time of the recording, left us a lot more. By the time of her death at age 60 in 2016, she had completed another 20 albums as a leader, with fruitful collaborations with, among many others, the legendary Ornette Coleman and her husband, trumpeter Wallace Roney, along the way. Quite possibly, my single favorite recorded performance by Allen is her amazing interpretation of Nino Rota’s “La Strada,” on her 2006 album, “Timeless Portraits And Dreams.”  Still, it’s generally agreed that “The Printmakers,” her first album as a leader, was the recording that best captured what she had in mind, her compositions, and the limitless scope of her imagination. 

Bill Sando of the American Pianists Association contributed to this article.