{"id":315,"date":"2006-01-09T01:06:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-09T09:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=315"},"modified":"2006-01-09T01:06:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-09T09:06:00","slug":"jessicas_night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2006\/01\/jessicas_night\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessica’s Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessica Williams played a magnificent solo concert Saturday night at The Seasons<\/a>. A tall, luminous presence in dark tones and silver, she began with her new-agey composition called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Love and Hate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and followed it with an explanation that it was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the sort of thing you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d hear on top-forty radio.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, not quite, but it prompted concern in the hall that we might be headed for an evening in George Winston territory. That worry began dissipating when she was eight bars into Billy Eckstine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I Want To Talk About You.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It was gone forever by the time she played \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Monks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Mood,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which opened an extended Thelonious Monk medley<\/a> that ended up swinging so hard and so deeply that the audience of 300 was a mass of smiling faces on bobbing heads. The nine-foot Steinway was stunning in its unamplified glory in the hall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perfect acoustics. Her command of it was breathtaking.
\nWilliams prefaced a Duke Ellington segment with the observation that she can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t play his music without feeling his warmth. The warmth filled the room as she explored \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mood Indigo,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In My Solitude\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Take The \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Train\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in an Ellington segment laced with allusions to several of his other tunes. Engaging if charmingly distracted in her conversation between pieces, she told of opening for Bill Evans<\/a> at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in the 1980s. After her first set, she recalled, she passed Evans on the stairs and he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Where the _____ did you come from?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a compliment she still relishes. (The chaste \u00e2\u20ac\u0153_____\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is hers, not mine). Then, she captured several aspects of Evans in her composition \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Beauty.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re such a great audience,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to take requests.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Before she finished talking, someone jumped the gun. A loud male voice asked for John Coltrane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wise One.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She grinned. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Just for that,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t play it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The next request was for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Giant Steps. No, she said; if Tommy Flanagan wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t play it, neither would she. It was a good-natured, but odd, refusal. Not only was Flanagan the pianist on Coltrane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s celebrated 1959 recording <\/a>of the piece, but he also recorded it in 1981 with his quartet<\/a>, and made trio versions in 1982 with George Mraz and Al Foster<\/a> and 1983 with Ron Carter and Tony Williams<\/a>. No matter; Williams was happy to comply with the next request, for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Round Midnight.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Again, Monk stimulated her most profound playing. The last piece, another request, Gershwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My Man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Gone Now,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d had echoes of Evans that gave way to pure Williams, the kind of inspired creativity that jazz players in the thirties called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153original stuff.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nShe thanked the audience, bowed and left the stage to a standing ovation, not of the knee-jerk variety that has been sweeping the land, but one motivated by artistry. Called back, Williams spoke about Erroll Garner, identified him as one of her heroes and cautioned her listeners never to take him for granted as a mere entertainer but to realize that he was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a great pianist and a great musician.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Then she went back to the Steinway and played a two-and-a-half-minute encore, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Body and Soul\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Not in D-flat, but E-flat,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said). Except for the key change, it was Garner circa 1951<\/a>, to the life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jessica Williams played a magnificent solo concert Saturday night at The Seasons. A tall, luminous presence in dark tones and silver, she began with her new-agey composition called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Love and Hate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and followed it with an explanation that it was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the sort of thing you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d hear on top-forty radio.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, not quite, but it prompted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}