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Geri Allen performed at Carnegie Hall in 2007. She had an academic background in musicology as well as in jazz performance.
Julien Jourdes for The New York Times;thumbnail, Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times, 2012
Geri Allen
Died on June 27, 2017 at age 60
Ms. Allen was an influential pianist and educator whose dense but agile playing reconciled far-flung elements of the jazz tradition. Her style — harmonically refracted and rhythmically complex, but also fluid — formed a bridge between jazz’s halcyon midcentury period and its diffuse present.
Notable Deaths 2017
Remembering Mary Tyler Moore, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lewis, David Rockefeller, Trisha Brown, Glen Campbell, Dick Gregory, Edith Windsor, Sam Shepard, Tom Petty and many others who died this year.