Jazz Articles about The Mary Lou Williams Collective

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The Mary Lou Williams Collective: Zodiac Suite: Revisited

by John Kelman
February 6, 2006

In a time when “female jazz performer is no longer an oxymoron, it's important to remember there was a time when jazz was essentially a men's club. All the more remarkable, then, that pianist Mary Lou Williams was not just an accomplished artist--in a time where women jazzers were typically relegated to vocalist roles--but a forward-thinking one with one foot in stride and the other in a rapidly evolving musical landscape. While Zodiac Suite: Revisited is not the first tribute ...

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The Mary Lou Williams Collective: Zodiac Suite: Revisited

by Jim Santella
February 5, 2006

The Mary Lou Williams Collective, an arm of the Mary Lou Williams Foundation, Inc., is devoted to the recording and performance of the music of the pianist and composer. Williams dedicated her Zodiac Suite to figures she respected, including Billie Holiday, Ben Webster, Duke Ellington, Ellis Larkins, Vic Dickenson, Leonard Feather, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Eddie Heywood, Bob Cranshaw, Frankie Newton, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Pianist Geri Allen interprets each movement from the ...

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The Mary Lou Williams Collective: Zodiac Suite: Revisited

by R. Emmet Sweeney
February 1, 2006

She was “the little girl who swings the band, an arranger for Andy Kirk, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and practically any other sublime big band name you could deign to think of. Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell hung out at her NYC apartment to soak up her knowledge during the bop era. Mary Lou Williams should be a household name, or at least a dorm room name. Something.One who carries her torch to enlighten bedraggled minds ...