By Irene Javors

This review is to be read by the more adventurous and daring afficionados who like their jazz not only played but also visualized. Get your gear together; put on your hiking boots and head on over to Flushing, Queens, N.Y. to see the recently opened "Mary Lou Williams: In Her Own Right, a multimedia exhibition,"at Flushing Town Hall. You do not need a passport to get there, just a metrocard or a full tank of gas (in these oil challenged times going by subway may be the best bargain in town).

This exhibit is a wonderful tribute to the legendary African American jazz pianist, composer, Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981). The exhibition is divided into three sections; youth, rise to fame, and later career. Over 300 objects, many of them quite rare and exceptional are beautifully displayed. Several artifacts come directly from Williams's own personal archive and collection which is now maintained at the Mary Lou Williams Foundation at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Many of these materials are displayed for the first time along with never before viewed writings by Ms. Williams.

A walk through this exhibit is a virtual excursion through the history of American jazz from 1910 to 1981. Williams's life and music both influenced and reflected the musical currents of her times. From vaudeville (1920's) to Kansas City swing (1930's) to New York Café Society (1940's), to the emergence of "be bop" and finally to the work of her later years; sacred music, the preservation of jazz and charity for destitute musicians.

What is most interesting about this exhibit is the way in which the works of the period are used to amplify our understanding of Williams's cultural and social world. The curator, Dr. Marc H. Miller, art historian and former curator at the Queens Museum of Art as well as curator for the groundbreaking exhibit "Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy," which toured around the USA from 1955-1956, has done an excellent job of showing the interrelationships among music, art, literature, and photography.

We are shown the photographs of Walker Evans and Gordon Parks, paintings by Romare Bearden and Bob Thompson and some exceptional works by Hale Woodruff, especially his "Giddap" (1935) which is a woodblock print of an African American man being lynched. This work is mounted above the display case that contains references to Billie Holiday's famous song, "Strange Fruit." The juxtapositioning of the music score with the visual image is very powerful and underscores just how subversive a medium jass was, is, and will continue to be as long as there's any "hep cats" left to listen.

We also get to see lots of Williams' memorabilia from scrapbooks to musical manuscripts, "Morning Glory," "Blue Skies," to record album covers, posters, handbills, personal belongings, and hundreds of wonderful photographs.

Williams's music is played in all the rooms and there is a very interesting short documentary on Mary Lou Williams' work with children as part of her desire to preserve the legacy of jazz.

The exhibit is free to all and open weekdays from 10am. To 5 pm. and weekends from noon until 5 pm. Upcoming related events celebrating Mary Lou Williams's life include

• November 17 - A performance of Williams's sacred music by the Boys Choir of Harlem under the direction of Dr. Walter Turnbull
• November 18 - The showing of Joanne Burker's 60 min. documentary "Mary Lou Williams: Music on My Mind." Commentary by Father Peter F. O. O'Brian, the Jesuit priest who was Williams's spiritual advisor, personal manager, and executor of her estate.