Geri Allen & Timeline, Live (Motéma). Allen’s considerable strengths are on display in the pianist’s recording with her trio and a percussive guest. She integrates dancer Maurice Chestnut’s steely tapping with the time-keeping and soloing of her gifted young sidemen, drummer Kassa Overall
and bassist Kenny Davis. Chestnut expands on the tradition established by Savion Glover and—long before—dancers like Baby Laurence who accommodated themselves to bebop. The crowds at the Oberlin Conservatory and Reed College concerts go wild at the exhilaration worked up by Chestnut and Overall. There is no denying the excitement of what they witnessed. It comes across even when one merely hears Chestnut in action. Near the end of Allen’s “Philly Joe,” the drummer and the dancer neatly encapsulate some of the licks the great drummer Philly Joe Jones inherited from his hero Sidney Catlett. It is impressive and somehow amusing to hear Chestnut dance the melody of Charlie Parker’s “Ah-Leu-Cha.”
It can be argued that the tapping, for all its bracing novelty, eventually becomes too much of a good thing. Allen’s playing more than compensates. It is a reminder of her high rank among the pianists of her generation who succeeded Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. Aside from her inspirational role in the rhythmic energy of the album, with Chestnut sitting out she has supremely lyrical moments in Mal Waldron’s “Soul Eyes” and an unaccompanied impressionistic treatment of Gershwin’s “Embraceable You.” She is firm in her own style but nonetheless manages to suggest Tyner’s power in his signature composition “Four by Five.”
At the summit of recorded collaborations between a tap dancer and a jazz band, this album may not supplant the 1952 sessions of Fred Astaire with Oscar Peterson, but it rewards repeated hearings. I recommend it for the substance of Allen’s playing and the quality of her trio. Chestnut’s tap dancing is a bonus.