This two-time Grammy Nominee was classically trained at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. In her mid-twenties she worked with the great Philly Joe Jones, drummer for the Miles Davis Quintet. She also played in the bands of Eddie Harris, Tony Williams, Stan Getz, Big Nick Nicholaus, Airto and Flora Purim, Charlie Rouse, John Abercrombie, Leroy Vinnegar, and others.
She has released over 65 albums and written over 300 compositions. She has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; a Rockefeller Grant for composing; the Alice B. Toklas Grant for Women Composers, and the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.
She was presented the Keys to the City of Sacramento, receiving four grants from the Sacramento Arts Commission, and the Keys to the City of San Mateo. She was chosen Artist of the Year in Santa Cruz County, for her free musical service to the elderly, and for donating support to the Women's Shelter of Watsonville.
During the last four decades, Jessica has recorded for Adelphi, Clean Cuts, Jazz Focus, Candid, Concord, Landmark-Fantasy, Timeless, Maxjazz, and Origin Arts. Now, she owns her own publishing company, JJW Music, owns her own CD company called Red and Blue Recordings, and runs her own successful Internet business, jessicawilliams.com.
She's been a guest on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. She's written scores for PBS and HBO and has received more than twenty ASCAP Special Awards for her prolific musical output. She has played everywhere from The Kennedy Center to the Opera House in Tokyo.
Reviewed by Dan McClenaghan, 2008
Rule Number 1 of writing a music review: try to be at least half as creative and spontaneous as the music at hand. Rule Number 2: If it's Jessica Williams' music you're writing about, good luck with Rule Number 1. Pianist Jessica Williams is another one of those jazz artists who hasn't received the acclaim she deserves. With forty years of professional playing and fifty albums to her credit, she doesn't boast a top-of-the-line profile of the Keith Jarrett or Herbie Hancock or Chick Corea variety. Maybe it's because she never played with Miles Davis. Players got launched out of those bands. Maybe it's geographical—she's been west coast-based since 1977. Maybe it's a “woman in a man's world” thing.
But the why of it doesn't really matter. The music matters, and the music that Williams, after a long career, has made in this century (to slice a nice chunk off the ongoing effort) puts her in the top level of jazz pianists. Her Live at Yoshi's, Volume 1 (MaxJazz, 2004) and Songs for A New Century (Origin Records, 2008) showcase an artist blossoming into her prime in terms of artistic self assurance, spontaneity and the pure joy of creating beautiful sounds.
Which brings us to Tatum's Ultimatum, Williams solo piano tribute to the great Art Tatum. Tatum (1909-1956) was a technically brilliant pianist who took, in part, Fats Waller's stride foundation and ran with it, spruced it up and added a million fast notes and a bunch of exuberance. His art was joyous, flashy and full of life. And Jessica Williams takes his stylistic approach and runs with it.
Williams doesn't copy Tatum, but she gets into his spirit, and sounds as if she's having the time of her life on a bunch of tunes that Tatum played, including Sidney Bechet's “Petite Fleur,” Gershwin's “Embraceable You,” “Can't Get Started,” and “Easy Living.” She, like Tatum, can play fast, exploding with right hand bursts of bird song notes, each key touch clear and clean and separate, even at ninety miles per hour. There is, always, a twinkle-in-the-eye elegance to her approach that she roots firmly in a tradition and shades with her own colorful musicality.
Williams has positioned herself in the top level of current jazz pianists and, with discs like Songs for a New Century and Tatum's Ultimatum, she has established herself as the top solo pianist working today.
