Spilled a few words about this on initial release late last year, but now it's started to pick up wider recognition from what you might fairly/unfairly consider more reputable sources, it feels like it might now be time for a revisit. Jessica Williams was a US jazz pianist of some renown, notable within her field for having earned some particularly gushing plaudits from a few select titans, most memorably McCoy Tyner and Dave Brubeck. You could not fairly describe her as an unknown, having gigged extensively and released a number of solo records. Nonetheless, Blue Abstraction arrives as a revelation, not simply because it contains previously 'lost' recordings (note - it's worth diving into the more extensive liner notes to understand just how it was 'found') but mostly because of the recordings themselves. Composed on the West Coast over a three year period, Williams deviated from her usual practice to work with prepared piano, replacing her long-standing interest in Thelonious Monk for a more active engagement with Cagian theory. The change in approach perhaps explains why the songs remained unheard until now, not quite appropriate for her then established audience. Listening now, they sound wholly apposite, instilled with a radical ethos that moves between inward-looking melancholy, moments of grandiosity and a kind of freewheeling cacophony that could have been borrowed (and interpolated) from her jazz roots. Mostly, however, it's immensely listenable, its experimental verve never forsaking an underlying sense of melody or well-conceived direction. References to Cage and Satie seem inevitable, but given Williams' trans identity and the mythic quality of the recordings, it's not unfair to also make connections with Julius Eastman, another visionary minority composer who communicated the sui generis from the margins. Williams sadly passed before this project saw the light of day, which means for her this period of her music, to which she would never again return, would remain in the margins. For everyone else, it feels like Blue Abstraction might be the moment we get to know her a whole lot better.
FFO: Julius Eastman, Maryanne Amacher, John Cage, Meredith Monk
