Geri Allen

Last night we heard the jazz pianist Geri Allen in a quartet at a club called the Jazz Standard.  The quartet was the pianist Allen, a bassist, a drummer, and a tap dancer, Maurice Chestnut.   The tap dancer was there as an instrumentalist, and functioned as a musician in the quartet.  While this sounded very odd at first, with the sound of the taps jarring with the very traditional sound of a piano trio, I gradually became used to it, and by the end, with a vigorous duet between the drummer and the tap dance, I was enjoying the combination.  Allen is a wonderful pianist, mostly in the mainstream, but with a delightful quirkiness and sometimes a very delicate touch.   At a certain point, I was listening to one of the numbers, and realized it had evolved into  "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" .   You haven't lived until you have heard "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" performed by a jazz piano trio and tap dancer.  Perhaps my only Christmas concert of the year...