Allison, Ben

Allison, Ben, jazz bassist/composer; b. New Haven, Conn., Nov. 17, 1966. Allison is artistic director and one of five composers-in-residence of the Jazz Composers Collective, a group that presents new music according to the vision of the composers. The Collective presents a concert series and publishes a newsletter, which is distributed at no charge. Allison is also coleader of The Herbie Nichols Project (with pianist Frank Kimbrough), and has written over 100 works for ensembles of varying size and instrumentation. In 1995 he was awarded a commissioning grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust for a suite entitled Medicine Wheel. He has also received grants from Meet the Composer, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, American Composers Forum, and the Aaron Copland Fund. He has taught jazz performance, improvisation, and/or composition at N.Y.U., the Mannes Coll. of Music (N.Y.C.), the New School for Social Research, the Univ. of N.C. (Greensboro), and Appalachian State Univ. (N.C.). Allison has been on the faculty of the Third Street Music School in N.Y.C., a guest lecturer for the New School’s Contemporary Music Program, and a composer-in-residence at the Fieldston School in Riverdale, N.Y. He has performed with Lee Konitz, Isaac Hayes, Gregory Hines, Dave Liebman, Clifford Jordan, Jackie Terrason, Billy Hart, Arthur Blythe, Vic Juris, Kenny Werner, The American Tap Dance Orch., The Village Vanguard Orch., The Maria Schneider Jazz Orch., and many others.

Discography

Seven Arrows (1995); Herbie Nichols Project: Love Is Proximity (1995).

—Lewis Porter