Jessica Williams - Blue Abstraction: Prepared Piano Project 1985–1987 (LP)

Blue Abstraction compiles a selection of Jessica Williams’ lost prepared piano recordings. These recordings document the beginning of a vital, solitary phase in her career: a period of intense sonic experimentation that began with physically altering a 6’4” grand piano—creating a new instrument, and from there, creating a new music. The results are breathtaking; from melancholic soundscapes with Satie-esque lyricism to forcefully controlled cacophony, always grounded by the distinct emotional voicing of her melodic lines. Jessica Williams (1948–2022) was a pioneering trans jazz pianist and composer from Baltimore, where she studied at the Peabody Conservatory. Among countless other greats, she gigged with Philly Joe Jones, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Tony Williams, Charlie Rouse, Jackie McLean, Roy Haynes, Charlie Haden, and Bobby Hutcherson, and recorded with Eddie Henderson, Eddie Harris, Leroy Vinnegar, Victor Lewis, and Ray Drummond. She received accolades from piano greats McCoy Tyner and Dave Brubeck. Williams could play anything and knew the standards deeply—expanding from there through her composing and arranging. Her first LP, The Portal of Antrim (Adelphi, 1976), included six solo piano improvisations, four pieces as a trio, and “Plath’s Return,” where she played all the instruments. After finishing her second album—a double LP of solo piano improvisations titled Portraits (Adelphi, 1977)—she moved to San Francisco and became the house pianist at the city’s premiere jazz spot, Keystone Korner. Thelonious Monk was one of Williams’ biggest influences. Her fifth LP, Update (Clean Cuts, 1982), features a take on “Ruby My Dear” and her sixth LP, Nothin’ But the Truth (BlackHawk, 1986), includes “’Round Midnight,” “Ugly Beauty,” and her tribute, “Monk’s Hat.” In a 1997 interview with Terry Gross, she recalled first hearing It’s Monk’s Time (Columbia, 1964): “[It] sounded like he was wearing boxing gloves, because I had heard all this precision piano playing—like Oscar [Peterson]—and this was a totally new thing for me. I grew to love Monk’s music, and I still do, but I had some questions about how he would do certain things.” Monk’s famous maxim—“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes”—opened up something essential for her. In 1985, with a head full of Monk’s dissonant harmonies, Williams began her prepared piano project. She altered the piano by placing vibrating and/or muting elements on top of and between the strings at varying distances across the harp—some sounding like bells or gongs (screws, bolts), others like percussion instruments (clothespins, hairpins, washers, erasers). The effect radically expanded the instrument’s possibilities, sometimes making it sound metallic or ghostly, other times muted, tactile, almost broken. Though pioneered by John Cage—who embraced chance and a sparse, meditative atmosphere—Williams brought an entirely new sensibility to the prepared piano, forging a personal musical language grounded in improvisation, nuanced timbral control, and compositional precision. Even the most dissonant elements land precisely within the parameters of her tonal framework. The resulting beauty and listenability of these works are a testament to Williams’ vision and mastery. The recordings on Blue Abstraction came out of three years of experimentation. She recorded at her own Quanta Studios and at Moon Studios (both in Sacramento), and two live performances at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco, on January 11 and May 10, 1986, as part of the Noe Valley Music Series. For Williams, these recordings were a personal transformation through the musical process. She described them as “temporal arrangements of sound and timbre... my self encoded on a chrome oxide surface [audio tape].” The process of listening back, she said, was “further investigation into my becoming.” The prepared piano gave her a language beyond technique—a direct link between sound, sensation, and the shifting contours of identity. She never returned to the prepared piano but continued to adopt its techniques—for example, emulating a koto on “Toshiko” from Songs for a New Century (Origin, 2008), or depressing multiple keys and reaching into the piano, strumming the strings to create a chord, on her compositions “Soldaji” from Live at Yoshi’s Volume Two (MAXJAZZ, 2005) and “Love and Hate” from Unity (Red and Blue, 2006). Though known for her recordings and live performances—especially of Monk tunes—Williams made some of her most forward-thinking music privately. Describing her childhood connection to the piano, she said, “I hit the notes, and I saw colors.” This immediate, sensorial relationship to sound persisted throughout her career, whether she was playing bebop standards or muting strings with hairpins. The music on this record disappeared for almost four decades. Perhaps the few who encountered it back then couldn’t fully understand what she had made. I’m excited to see what happens this time around. –Kye Potter Los Angeles