Free to Dream

Patrice Williamson | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 17, 2002)
• Original Release Date: June 6, 2002
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: River Lily
• ASIN: B00006A99M
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #913,835 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

About the Artist

Some people are just born to music.

Patrice Williamson’s childhood home in Memphis, Tennessee was filled with song. Her late father, Webster Williamson, an avid amateur singer, choir director, and pillar of the St. Stephen’s Baptist Church music ministry, introduced his children to both sacred music and the secular styles of greats like Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, and Lena Horne. With the encouragement of her mother, Lillie Williamson, Patrice followed in the footsteps of her elder sister, Denise, taking up the violin and making her debut at age four, playing a duet with her sister in front of the St. Stephen's congregation.

From then on, she was hooked on music and performing. To her violin studies, she added piano (at age seven) and flute (at 11). She imagined herself growing into a world-famous concert artist:

Patrice carried the dream into her teens, but chose a "practical" major, communications, when she enrolled at the University of Tennessee. In her second year, however, she realized her heart was elsewhere and decided to major in music.

Her focus remained on classical performance; she served as principal flutist for the opera & symphony orchestras. It wasn’t until the conductor of the UT Studio Jazz Orchestra overheard her scatting during a rehearsal break, and immediately offered her a vocal solo, that she considered singing as a possible career path. Encouraged by UT faculty jazz pianist Donald Brown, she headed to New England Conservatory to focus full-time on her voice, under the guidance of Dominique Eade.

In Boston, Patrice hit the ground running. Before her Master’s degree studies were complete, she was weighing rival offers for a four-month performance engagement at Somerset’s Bar in Singapore and further studies at NEC in the school’s prestigious Artist Diploma program. In the end, she managed to do both.

A regular at Boston’s celebrated Regattabar since1996, she has also appeared in the company of Tony Bennett, James Moody, & Cassandra Wilson at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival; and Danilo Perez & Kevin Mahogony at the Marblehead Jazz Festival. Around the U.S., she’s been heard at Boston’s Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall,; as well as the IDB Cultural Center Concert Series in Washington, DC.

Singapore, having had a taste of her, wanted more; and Patrice has since returned to the scene of her first triumph as a special guest performer in the nation’s New Year’s Eve Millennium Celebration; and as part of the Eden Project, an international group of female jazz improvisers who rocked the International Women’s Forum in March 2000.

The critics and the jazz community have not been slow to recognize that this talent is for real.

The response to her debut recording, My Shining Hour (released in September 1998) has been overwhelmingly positive, drawing favorable comparisons to legends like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. She was honored with a coveted "Best of Boston" award in 1997, and in 1999 and 2000 was a nominee for "Best Jazz Vocalist" by the Kahlua Boston Music Awards.

Product Description

On Free to Dream, Williamson’s cool, smoky, and supple alto envelops each song in a sensuous embrace. There’s a remarkable play of darkness and light and a wide range of inflections in her voice that bring out shades of meaning in the words. Her unerring feel for time is marked by a playfulness with the beat that let’s her drag a word or phrase behind the beat one instant then spring ahead of it the next. Even when she’s taking liberties with a song, she never loses track of the words or melody; she’s seems to be guided by an innate feeling for the lyrical. .

Throughout the album, she is able to make personal statements that also address universal feelings. Her originals, such as "In the Loop" and "Free to Dream" are statements of self-hood, independence, and hopefulness. She conveys the sweet sadness of love with great compassion and understanding on Bonfa’s "Gentle Rain" and Stevie Wonder’s "Another Star." There’s just a hint of laughter in "But not for Me" and tenderness in "With a Song in My Heart." But Williamson has plenty of emotional range and there’s sass and self-assurance in the down and dirty blues, "You Don’t Know What You’re Missing" and the headlong euphoria of bebop in Bud Powell’s "Celia." Her medley of songs from The Sound of Music, a loving daughter’s playful and affectionate "thank-you" to her late father, is heartwarming and creatively insightful. This is not merely an album by a singer with a back up band, but a real jazz singer’s album. Williamson scats with authority on "Alone Together" and her pure, melodious flute playing graces "Gentle Rain" and "Puttin’ on the Ritz."