Jazz Articles about Jessica Williams

Jessica Williams: Live At Yoshi's Volume One

by Chris May
August 17, 2004

It's all too easy to let piano trio albums pass you by. The format is so familiar, and the palette so thoroughly explored, that the prospect of adventure and surprise may seem remote. If it's not the Esbjorn Svensson Trio or the Bad Plus, packing their radical hairstyles and digital effects, the music can find itself cursorily dismissed as predictable and pedestrian, at best, or cocktail bar irrelevancy, at worst.

Which is why you won't find Jessica Williams ...

Jessica Williams: Live At Yoshi's, Volume One

by Jim Santella
August 2, 2004

An evening out with the Jessica Williams trio is a pleasure never to be forgotten. Her interpretation of the songs we love keeps them near and dear to our hearts.

With Ray Drummond and Victor Lewis, the pianist rings true with a song selection fit for lovers of the straight-ahead scene. Her crisp articulation excites the intellect, while the swinging groove of her trio's animation provokes empathetic movement.

Williams introduces a lovely tune, explores its nuances ...

Jessica Williams: Live at Yoshi's Volume One

by John Kelman
July 17, 2004

Pianist Jessica Williams may not be as well known, say, as Mulgrew Miller or Kenny Barron, but she's a powerful and talented pianist more than a little influenced by Thelonious Monk. Still, with an immediately recognizable playing style all her own, Williams clearly belongs in the upper ranks of mainstream pianists, and her latest disc, Live at Yoshi's Volume One , recorded in July of 2003, continues to affirm her position.

In a programme composed primarily of well-heeled standards, with ...

Jessica Williams: Ain't Misbehavin': Solo Piano Live at the Holywell Music Room, Oxford

by J. Robert Bragonier
October 14, 2003

In 1742, Oxford's Holywell Music Room was built specifically for concerts with funds raised by public subscription; it is reputedly the oldest such building in Europe. Accommodating 250 persons and blessed with excellent acoustics, it has over the years hosted such musicians as Handel, Mozart, Haydn and Vivaldi. On March 10, 1996 the room hosted one Jessica Williams from the USA. Her technical facility, touch, and musicality clearly indicated her familiarity with the above-mentioned musicians, but the music she played ...

Jessica Williams: All Alone

by Terrell Kent Holmes
May 5, 2003

Pianist Jessica Williams follows up on last year's trio outing This Side Up with All Alone, a collection of standards and originals for solo piano that she plays with great imagination and dexterity. And when Williams plays, she doesn't play around, taking on all-time champion composers like Ellington, Mingus, and Irving Berlin. The pianist takes "As Time Goes By" through several styles and tempos before finally returning it to its table at Rick's. Williams explores the higher ...

Jessica Williams: All Alone

by Jim Santella
March 1, 2003

Jessica Williams interprets our favorite standards like no other. She turns “As Time Goes By” into a history lesson, with mental images from the film Casablanca and outside quotes to fill in the cracks. Irving Berlin’s “All Alone” takes on a similar role, as the pianist’s crisp right hand dances lightly to a simple stride left, in search of what has made a century of good music wear so well. Like this lush ballad, the album sashays easily through familiar ...

Jessica Williams: All Alone

by C. Michael Bailey
February 9, 2003

This time last year saw the debut release of West Coast pianist Jessica Williams for MAXJAZZ. This Side Up (2002), an exceptional standard trio offering, blew over the piano landscape like a nuclear tsunami, flattening all lesser offerings at the time. Williams's encyclopedic understanding of the many schools of jazz piano and the styles of those schools' greatest practitioners prompted this writer to say,

...Ms. Williams has the facility to play in any damn style she likes, ...