Guest post: J.D. Pate finds jazz supertrio sublime

Geri Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington and Esperanza Spalding

J.D. Pate

Last Wednesday (10/16/14), the supertrio of Geri Allen (piano), Terri Lyne Carrington (drums) and Esperanza Spalding (bass) visited Springfield for a concert at Hammons Hall. It was a huge night for jazz players and listeners.

Here is a guest blog post about the concert from Springfield saxophonist J.D. Pate, who leads a duo called The Jazz Machine and plays in the Missouri Jazz Orchestra. His remarks first appeared on his Facebook page, and he has accepted my request to reprint them here.

I used to ask the question “Why are there so few women in jazz?” But after the show at Hammons Hall with Esperanza Spalding, Geri Allen, and Terri Lyne Carrington, I won’t ask that question any more. Because if there were many more women like these in jazz, us guys would be out of work. 

These ladies inhabit a sublime realm of rhythm and harmony that the rest of us can only speculate about. Carrington was a punchy yet precise orchestrator of a complex drum set, touching the edge of the cymbal so delicately you could hardly hear it and then smacking you upside the head with a tom bomb when you least expected it. The 32-fingered Geri Allen molded changes from air into tears and glued the trio together with sparse punctuated chord snaps that popped the structure of the tune into focus. And Spalding was coiled like a sparky velociraptor around a bass that dwarfed her--but she dominated it with an ease that belied her bird-like stature. And her voice? Words fail me. Description is futile. 

These three are exceptionally well matched, and performed with a smooth facility that made their complex charts easy to listen to. Their renditions of Wayne Shorter's “Fall” and “Infant Eyes” were especially impressive. 

In conclusion: they don’t suck. So see them if you get a chance.