In her own time she
looks up, faces them
from her solitude.
Bill Harris' Dark Shadows
In terms of THIS music (fka "jazz music") as contrasted with THAT music (aka "classical music") women instrumentalists have had a very difficult road to travel. As in so many areas of supposed creative life, women artists are very often overlooked and marginalized by critics and journalists. And critics and keepers of the flame who are women - Valerie Wilmer, certainly - are themselves marginalized. Please pay attention. There is no direct path to my point. Let's see:
I overlooked the pianist, composer, musician Jessica Williams for years. I have expressed elsewhere my aversion to most guitar players as regards THIS music. Next in my aversion line are piano players. I can't stand Oscar Peterson as a soloist, Brad Mahldau, Herbie Handcock, most ECM pianists (including much of Keith Jarrett). I like the Detroit Greats: Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, and Barry Harris. Bud Powell, Monk, Errol Garner, and Eddie Costa are my favs naturally. I admire McCoy Tyner greatly. I rarely listen to Bill Evans anymore. Cecil Taylor? Of course! Duke Ellington, yes. Count Basie, of course. Mathew Shipp, not so much. Mal Waldron, yes. Junko Onishi with Jackie McLean, yes. I rarely buy THIS music's pianists without horns. OK?
Most of my information about THIS music in recent years has come to me via the internet (see the links attached hereto), via the printed word, BBC3, and our National Treasure WKCR-FM streaming on the worldwide web from Columbia University in NYC. The 'news' provided by Amiri Baraka, Whitney Balliett, Gunther Schuller, Martin Williams, A. B. Spellman, Vallerie Wilmer, and even Stanley Crouch when he's not frontin' is still news.
Jessica J. Williams. Since I didn't care about THIS music's pianists, by and large, when I came across Ms. Williams, I ignored her music. Also I had dismissed her before iTunes and Amazon - I guess this is my only excuse; I haven't ignored much music since. But Ms. Williams is a woman. And this may have contributed to my looking elsewhere for my pianists - for the few.
My first hearing of Jessica Williams' piano virtuosity and soul happened earlier this week by accident. I was made aware of the vocalist Patty Waters many years ago (before iTunes). I knew that she had recorded for ESP - so her music was at least not post modern. Ms. Waters was mentioned in something I was reading on the internet. So I sampled a recent duo recording that she had made with Jessica Williams. I was totally captivated by this magnificent musical duo. So I listened into Jessica Williams' music. What a wonderful discovery! I'll attempt to make the foregoing more precise. So just wait.
Locating Jessica Williams, pianist. First, she has her own sound. In terms of what I admire in a pianist of THIS music, my preferences are displayed above. But let's imagine a scale between Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk. Eddie Costa is the Bill Evans of "All About Rosie" (George Russell's composition) - a thumping Evans. Maybe Bill Evans was Eddie Costa without the thump on most days. Top of the thumping pianists: Errol Garner, Lennie Tristano, Monk, Eddie Costa, Jackie Byard, McCoy Tyner, Junko Onishi, and Jessica Williams. Can't forget Don Pullen or D.D. Jackson either.
Listen to her solo recording of Monk's tunes and her Misty - you'll get the idea. Her left hand is very strong and she's a melodist - listen to her with Patty Waters on Lady Day's Don't Explain.
Ms. Williams has recorded over sixty albums, mostly solo and trio efforts. She performs her own compositions and popular-song standards and the standard of THIS music, the compositions of Coltrane, Miles, Monk and Mingus. Jessica Williams isn't mentioned in the 1998 (4th) edition of Cook's & Morton's Guide to Jazz on CD. In the 2000 (5th) editions she is noted with condescension. Writing of Ms. Williams' Monk recording they remark,
The best of the album is in the opening ten minutes, with 'Bemsha Swing', 'Just A Gigolo' and 'Reflections' rattled off with drive, swing and great charm. The rest is a touch laboured and will probably appear only only to devoted Williams fans. [1578]I won't quote anymore from Cook & Morton; I ask the reader to compare their remarks on Brad Mahldau [1014 - 1015] with their remarks on Ms. Williams. Better yet compare Mr. Mahldau insipid music making with the inspired piano reflections of Ms. Williams. Cook & Morton write, "Mehldau continues to excite enormous interest." I heard him live (barely) in Ann Arbor a couple of years ago. He and his trio were enormously dull. A guy thing, I guess. Of course, these guys wouldn't describe a guy's music-making as charming! Right?
Music Ecology. I used to tell people that my rôle, in scuffling around Columbus, Ohio begging funding sources for money and presenting organizations for space to present THIS and THAT music, was that of music ecologist. I was trying to preserve living music, new and newer music; music that was un-heard and might never be heard. Someone asked Lee Konitz why he played standards; he said that they were the best tunes. It's also best to preserve the best music. Music without immediate commercial potential.
ONCE FESTIVAL(S) and PROMUSICA(S). Yea.
www.jessicawilliams.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdL0hJjHkFU&playnext=1&list=PL55CEC7663FAED02A&feature=results_video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzycN9qmeXQ&list=PL55CEC7663FAED02A&index=10
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