Customer Reviews

Live at Yoshi's 1

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was not in the audience on the night this recording was made at Yoshi's in Oakland, California, but I wish I had been, as it must have been one enchanted evening. Williams is at her best with Ray Drummond and Victor Lewis; the three of them play as one. Williams is the shining star, playing with a purity rarely heard on such live recordings. She has an amazing gift, and in front of a live audience she plays the piano as if she is offering the music rather than showing it off as so many performers do. The sound quality and engineering is superior compared to most live recordings, with no obstrusive background noise, just the enthusiastic applause at the end of each cut from an audience who knew they were hearing something special.

As with all of Williams' recordings, you will find something new here each time you listen, and you will go to places you never imagined music could take you.

The second recording for Jessica Williams with the
amazing team of Ray Drummond and Victor Lewis for MazJazz,
this one live in Oakland, CA. The interplay between these
three is tightly knit and the emotions that she puts into
her compositions and performance of them just are so equally
shared by the rest of the band. Listen to "Poem in G Minor",
the way she works on a theme or styling, then expands on it,
then comes back to it, so beautifully. Truly one of the
modern masters of jazz piano.

Jessica Williams is a very gifted pianist who combines great technical proficiency with profound musicality. By turns dramatic, lyrical, and meditative, her playing contains echoes of such predecessors as Waller, Garner, Garland, Monk, and Evans (to name just a few), yet her sound is distinctively her own and decidedly fresh and modern. As an improviser she is boundlessly creative and never seems less than fully engaged and "in the moment"; not only does she seem to be able to play anything that occurs to her, but what occurs to her is always interesting and often arrestingly beautiful. The two volumes of "Live at Yoshi's" present her at her best, and in the company of two skillful collaborators whose style complements hers quite effectively. The song selection strikes a nice balance, with a good mix of standards, works by other jazz musicians, and Williams's own lovely and inventive compositions. The sound is also exceptionally good; while the piano is perhaps a shade brighter than would be ideal, the recording captures the subtleties of the performances with impressive clarity and detail. Either volume would be a fine introduction to a musician who deserves to be much better known than she is.

She's been part of the jazz music scene for some 30 years, and has been nominated for a couple of Grammy Awards, and yet it is obvious from reading some of the reviews of this and other CDs that a lot of folks are only now discovering Jessica Williams. If you are not familiar with her, you can't find a better introduction than Yoshi's, Vol. 1 and 2. These recordings run the gamut from dazzling creativity to poetic beauty. This is turn-up-the-volume, serious jazz. If you have forgotten why you fell in love with this music to begin with, listen to Jessica, and fall in love with it all over again. Who is or was the greatest jazz pianist? Bill Evans? Keith Jarrett? Art Tatum or Oscar Peterson? I don't know the answer to that, or even if there is an answer to it, but I do know that Jessica is in the very short list of the greatest. My brother is not a jazz musician, but he is a musician. I put on Yoshi's, Vol 1 the other night and he said, "Ah, Jessica, she's so easy on the ears. And she can flat play a piano." Indeed, she can, she's wonderful.

You have to hand it to Jessica Williams for writing interesting harmonies. Her forays into darker modes and her use of dissonance really are piquant. But the rhythm of these pieces is lacking, at times sounding like some of the cross-genre blah I hear in the Netherlands. When I want toe-tapping, rollicking music, this CD is near the bottom of the pile.

Improvisation, the meat and potatoes of jazz, is definitely found wanting here. Williams betrays an academic approach to improvisation, perhaps the indelible effect of her classical training. To be fair, it's hard for classical-to-jazz pianists to liberate themselves from their former paradigm. Her Chopinesque runs are technically difficult, but they are overwrought and rather the same from piece to piece. It's as though at a certain point Williams decides, "all right, enough swing. Let's do the filigree thing and call it a night." The album becomes tedious.

That single flaw is the reason why Williams is not well known. I think the third track, "You Say You Care" avoids most of those problems, so that's the only one I listen to regularly. I wish she'd fix the rest, because she's clearly a smart musician.