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ACS
Allen Carrington Spalding
Program Notes
2013
Billing
ACS
Allen Carrington Spalding
Lineup
Geri Allen; piano
Terri Lyne Carrington; drums
Esperanza Spalding; bass and vocals
ACS is comprised of pianist Geri Allen, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding; three
preeminent musicians whose careers intersect across the landscape of contemporary jazz. Formed out of their work
together on Carrington’s Grammy Award winning album “The Mosaic Project,” the small ensemble stretches boundaries
and revels in the art form. In response to their debut at New York’s legendary Village Vanguard, The Village Voice
remarked, “the set’s expressionistic push-pull turned out to be a show of jazz fealty as disorienting as it was riveting.”
The trio is elegant, experimental, and unquestionably bold.
Geri Allen is an internationally recognized composer and pianist. Since 1982 she has recorded, performed or
collaborated with Ravi Coltrane, Dianne Reeves, Bill Cosby, Ron Carter, Ornette Coleman and Paul Motian. Allen is also
an active jazz educator, and has taught at the New England Conservatory, The New School in New York and her alma
mater, Howard University. She currently teaches at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance as an
Associate Professor of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation.
American drummer Terri Lyne Carrington has been at the top of the music industry for almost 25 years, collaborating
with luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, David Sanborn, Joe Sample, Cassandra
Wilson, Clark Terry, Nancy Wilson, George Duke, Dianne Reeves, and numerous others. Her latest endeavor, “The
Mosaic Project,” brings together some of the world’s most celebrated female instrumentalists and vocalists.
In one of the most startling achievements in jazz history, bassist Esperanza Spalding captured the world’s attention upon
earning the title of Best New Artist at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards. A gifted composer with a hypnotic voice,
Spalding stretches the boundaries of jazz and continues her evolution with the 2012 release of Radio Music Society,
which she describes as “bombastic and fun – funkier and more upbeat” than her critically acclaimed Chamber Music
Society.
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Individual Artist Biographies
Geri Allen
Geri Allen is an internationally known composer and pianist. Since 1982, she has recorded, performed or collaborated
with artists as diverse as Ravi Coltrane, Dianne Reeves, Liz Wright, and Simone, in a celebration of the life and music of
Nina Simone, Donald Walden, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Bill Cosby, Mal Waldron, Sir Simon Rattle, Lee Konitz, Vernon Reid,
Jackie Hillsman and Peter Bernard, JoAnne Akalaitis, Clark Terry, George Shirley, Carrie Mae Weems, Ron Carter and
Tony Williams, Carmen Lundy, Lester Bowie's From the Root To The Source, Kevin Maynor, Meshell Ndegeocello,
Howard University's Afro Blue, Dewey Redman, Jimmy Cobb, Sandra Turner-Barnes, Marcus Belgrave, Betty Carter,
Marian McPartland, Roy Brooks, Charlie Haden and Paul Motion, Terri Lynn Carrington, Hal Wilner, Mino Cinelu, Dr. Billy
Taylor, Joan Rivers, and Mary Wilson and the Supremes.
Professor Allen has released a number of recordings under her own name. These include: The Nurturer, Eyes in the Back
of Your Head, Maroons, Homegrown, The Printmakers, Twenty One, The Gathering, The Life of a Song, and, most
recently, the ambitious and critically acclaimed Timeless Portraits and Dreams. A newly released Timeline, Live presents
Ms. Allen on piano, Kenny Davis on bass, Kassa Overall on drums, and tap percussionist Maurice Chestnut. This is a
rhythmically innovative work and has just been released on Ms. Allen's own label. Geri Allen is a Motema artist, and the
forthcoming Refractions: Flying Toward the Sound, a work for solo piano which she composed during the period of her
Guggenheim Fellowship, will be released by Motema in the new year.
Many honors have come Professor Allen's way. She was recently invited by Ms. Jessye Norman to participate in Honor, A
Celebration Of the Legacy Of African Music, held at Carnegie Hall Spring, 2008. She has received the key to the city of
Cambridge during Geri Allen Week at Harvard University, and the key to the city of Cleveland. Howard University has
honored her with its Benny Golson Award, while Spelman College bestowed its African Classical Music Award on her in
2007. She was the first artist to receive the Lady Of Soul Award in Jazz, and was also the youngest person—and the first
woman—to receive the Danish Jazzpar Prize. Professor Allen is a 2008-2009 Guggenheim Fellow for Musical
Composition. She is a Detroit native and a graduate of Cass Technical High School, Detroit's magnet school for music.
She is also a graduate of Howard University where she later served as Assistant Professor of Music. During that period,
Howard honored her with both its Distinguished Alumni and Distinguished Professor Awards. Professor Allen also holds
a master's degree in ethnomusicology from The University of Pittsburgh, where she studied with Dr. Nathan Davis, Dr.
Kwabena Nketia, John Blacking, and Dr. Bell Yung.
Professor Allen came to The School of Music, Theatre, and Dance after teaching at The New England Conservatory of
Music and The New School in New York City. In addition to her own performances and the recordings under her own
name, Professor Allen has participated in a number of notable collaborations. These include playing on the Classic
Ellington, and Americana CDs, Sir Simon Rattle, conductor; Miles: Cool and Collected, a CD anthology of Miles Davis'
work from 1956 to 1984; tenure in the Ornette Coleman Quartet from 1991 to 1995, culminating in the celebrated
Sound Museum CD; and The Mary Lou Williams Collective of which she is the musical Director. The Collective has issued
Zodiac Suite: Revisited on Mary Records. Allen played the role of Mary Lou Williams in Robert Altman's film Kansas City,
and she contributed the original musical score to the filmed documentary Beah: A Black Woman Speaks directed by Lisa
Gay Hamilton, which won a Peabody Award. Most recently, Professor Allen has collaborated with Trio 3 whose members
include Oliver Lake, Andrew Cyrille, and Reggie Workman. A CD by these four musicians has just been released on Intakt
Records. It is called At This Time.
Professor Allen's work as a composer has been honored by SESAC. Her ability has won her commissions from Jazz at
Lincoln Center, Music Theatre Group, American Music Theatre Festival, Stanford University, and, most recently, from
The Walt Whitman Arts Center and Meet the Composer who commissioned For the Healing of the Nations, a Sacred Jazz
Work, composed in tribute to the victims and survivors of the 9/11 tragedy. Currently Professor Allen has been
commissioned to compose an Opera for Trilogy: An Opera Company. Geri Allen continues to concertize all over the
world.
Terri Lyne Carrington
GRAMMY® Award-winning drummer, composer and bandleader, Terri Lyne Carrington, was born in 1965 in Medford,
Massachusetts. After an extensive touring career of over 20 years with luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter,
Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, David Sanborn, Joe Sample, Cassandra Wilson, Clark Terry, Dianne Reeves and more, she recently
returned to her hometown where she was appointed professor at her alma mater, Berklee College of Music. Terri Lyne
also received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 2003.
After studying under full scholarship at Berklee, with the encouragement of her mentor, Jack DeJohnette, Carrington
moved to New York in 1983. For 5 years she was a much in-demand musician, working with James Moody, Lester Bowie,
Pharoah Sanders, and others. In the late ‘80s she relocated to Los Angeles, where she gained recognition on late night
TV as the house drummer for the Arsenio Hall Show, then again in the late ‘90s as the drummer on the Quincy Jones late
night TV show, VIBE, hosted by Sinbad.
In 1989, Carrington released a GRAMMY®-nominated debut CD entitled Real Life Story, which featured Carlos Santana,
Grover Washington Jr., Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter, Patrice Rushen, Gerald Albright, John Scofield, Robert Irving III,
Greg Osby, Don Alias and Hiram Bullock. Other solo CDs include 2002’s Jazz is a Spirit, which features Herbie Hancock,
Gary Thomas, Wallace Roney, Terence Blanchard, Kevin Eubanks, and Bob Hurst, and 2004’s Structure, a cooperative
group which features Adam Rogers, Jimmy Haslip and Greg Osby. Both CDs were released on the Europe-based ACT
Music label and enjoyed considerable media attention and critical acclaim in the European and Japanese markets.
Carrington’s production and songwriting collaborations with artists such as Gino Vannelli, Peabo Bryson, Dianne Reeves,
Siedah Garrett, Marilyn Scott have produced notable works as well, including a special song commissioned by the
Atlanta Committee for the 1996 Olympic Games, “Always Reach for Your Dreams,” (featuring Peabo Bryson), and her
production of the Dianne Reeves GRAMMY®-nominated CD, That Day, which hovered at the top of the music charts for
many months.
Carrington has performed on many recordings throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s thru today. Notable examples of her work
include Herbie Hancock’s GRAMMY® Award-winning CD Gershwin’s World, where she played alongside Joni Mitchell and
Stevie Wonder. She has toured with each of Hancock’s musical configurations (from electric to acoustic) over the last 10
years and is featured on his Future2Future DVD.
After a hiatus from the U.S. recording scene as a solo recording artist, Carrington returned in 2008 with More To Say...
(Real Life Story: NextGen). Joining her was an impressive all-star cast of jazz and contemporary jazz instrumentalists,
including George Duke, Everette Harp, Kirk Whalum, Jimmy Haslip, Greg Phillinganes, Gregoire Maret, Christian McBride,
Danilo Perez, Patrice Rushen, Robert Irving III (who also serves as co-producer), Chuck Loeb, Tineke Postma, Ray Fuller,
Dwight Sills, Anthony Wilson, Les McCann and a special appearance by her dad, Sonny Carrington, on tenor. In addition,
she collaborated with esteemed vocalist Nancy Wilson for the song, “Imagine This.”
Carrington released The Mosaic Project in July 2011, her fifth recording overall and first on Concord Jazz. The critically
acclaimed CD, which won a GRAMMY® Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album, gathered a myriad of voices and crystallized
them into a multi-faceted whole that far outweighed the sum of its parts. She produced the 14-song set which featured
some of the most prominent female jazz artists of the last few decades: Esperanza Spalding, Dianne Reeves, Dee Dee
Bridgewater, Sheila E., Nona Hendryx, Cassandra Wilson, Geri Allen and several others. Carrington said the emergence of
so many great female jazz artists is what made an album like The Mosaic Project possible, more so than in decades past.
On February 5, 2013, Carrington released Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue, her much anticipated homage to Duke
Ellington, Charles Mingus and Max Roach, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the release of their iconic 1963 Money
Jungle album. Her new recording features Gerald Clayton and Christian McBride, with guests Clark Terry, Lizz Wright,
Herbie Hancock and others.
Esperanza Spalding
Since her early years to her current success as a creative musician, Esperanza Spalding has charted her own course. The
young bassist/vocalist/composer was one of the biggest breakout stars of 2011, garnering Best New Artist at the 53rd
Grammy® Awards. This is unprecedented by a jazz musician, and Spalding continues to make the unprecedented her
norm.
Spalding always strives to innovate her music, and has already reached numerous developments in her professional
career. Her journey as a solo artist began with the 2006 release of Junjo, featuring pianist Aruán Ortiz and drummer
Francisco Mela. She presented the various sides of her writing on Esperanza, her 2008 international debut recording,
quickly topping Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Chart and becoming that year’s best selling jazz album worldwide.
Numerous awards and appearances followed, including an invitation by President Barack Obama to appear at both the
White House and the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony, performing at the 84th Academy Awards, and an appearance on the
Late Show with David Letterman that found Letterman and bandleader Paul Shaffer proclaiming the young musician as
the “coolest” guest in the program’s three-decade history.
Her experimental sketches continued with Chamber Music Society in 2010, joined by keyboardist Leo Genovese,
drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, percussionist Quintino Cinalli, vocalists including legendary Milton Nascimento, and a
string trio arranged by Gil Goldstein and Spalding. The album was another instant chart topper and gained multiple
awards, earning her Grammy® for Best New Artist in 2011.
Maintaining her lifelong passion for new sounds and uncharted territory, the versatile Spalding has collaborated with
musicians and artists from different styles and genres, including Wayne Shorter, Prince, Herbie Hancock, Corinne Bailey
Mae, Bruno Mars, and Janelle Monáe.
Her latest recording, Radio Music Society, includes a mosaic array of musicians; jazz legends Joe Lovano, Jack DeJohnette
and Billy Hart; hip-hop giant Q-Tip, Algebra Blessett, Lalah Hathaway, Gretchen Parlato and Lionel Loueke; Portland
mentors Janice Scroggins and Thara Memory, as well as the horn section of Memory’s American Music Program
ensemble. Spalding hopes this album can serve as a window for the musicians whom she loves and admires to reach the
mainstream audience, as what they manifest “bring good into the lives of the people who hear them.”
Radio Music Society is another unprecedented chapter in the Esperanza Spalding story, as she continues on her journey
of new musical horizons.