NEW RELEASE: Deanna Witkowski Honors The First Lady of Jazz, Mary Lou Williams, on FORCE OF NATURE due out January 28, 2022 (MCG Jazz)

Pianist and Composer Deanna Witkowski Honors The First Lady of Jazz, Mary Lou Williams, on Force of Nature, due out January 28, 2022

On Force of Nature, her lovingly conceived and radiantly realized seventh album, Deanna Witkowski has created a multi-leveled masterpiece. Due out January 28, 2022 on MCG Jazz, the album displays her glorious musicianship and encyclopedic command of genres and techniques, while also revisiting the compositional genius of the major 20th-century artist Mary Lou Williams. The album also documents the firm musical and spiritual connection between Williams and Witkowski.

Released on the heels of Witkowski’s first book – Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul, her detailed and engaging biography of Williams – Force of Nature caps off 20 years of immersive research into the life and work of the woman called “The First Lady of Jazz.”

To fans and students of her music, Mary Lou (who died in 1981) stands tall as one of the best-known but still undervalued women in jazz history: a marvelous and harmonically intrepid pianist; a pioneering composer-arranger, admired (and hired) by Duke Ellington; an influential educator and early adopter of bebop; and one of the first jazz artists to infuse her music with her Catholic faith, most notably in three jazz Masses.  

To the well-traveled and exhilarating pianist-composer Witkowski, Mary Lou is all those things and something more: an inspiration, certainly, but also a guiding light – and, in absentia, a life coach for the deeply religious Witkowski, whose own resume includes an impressive number of award-winning sacred-music compositions. “I think of Mary Lou as a mentor, because she’s someone who was able to really integrate her spirituality, her Catholicism, with her music,” says Witkowski.

Most of the tracks on Force of Nature were written by Williams. Among them are several movements from the most famous of her extended compositions, the 1945 Zodiac Suite, including an ingenious mashup of the movement titled “Cancer” and “Act of Contrition,” from the late-60s Music for Peace. On “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” which Williams did not write, Witkowski refashions this Swing-era classic into a languorous ballad, well suited to reflect three events that affected Williams’ life and career in the early 40s: her move to Sugar Hill in Harlem, the closing of the Savoy Ballroom, and the 1943 Harlem Riots.

On another album highlight, Witkowski crafts a small medley from the 1938 big-band blues “What’s Your Story, Morning Glory” (one of Williams’ earliest triumphs) and the contemporaneous but little-known “Ghost of Love”; what starts as an achingly soulful trio meditation leads to a wide-ranging, effortlessly flowing and occasionally rhapsodic piano solo. Meanwhile, the title track – the only Witkowski original in the set – channels the vivacity of Mary Lou’s entire oeuvre into a driving Latin beat colored by Witkowski’s genre-spanning expertise.

Photo: Erika Kapin

Over the last two decades, Williams’s music has become an ongoing source of study and interpretation for Witkowski, finally leading her to a new hometown and a side career as a biographer-academic, currently working on her Ph.D. in jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Actually, the book came before the album. In 2019, when Witkowski first sojourned in Pittsburgh to research Mary Lou’s life, she met with guitarist Marty Ashby, the driving force behind the jazz program at Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild and the MCG Jazz label. “I was telling him how the research was going and said, ‘It’s really a shame that I have this book coming out but I don’t have any recordings of myself doing Mary Lou’s music’ – which I have been playing a lot, for quite a while. So Marty said, ‘Well, we should do something about that.’ So that’s kind of how it started.”

The original plan, to record these tracks in May 2020, collapsed under the COVID-19 surge. And by the time of the postponed recording date, in January 2021, circumstances had changed considerably. “It was pretty amazing that we could do this at all,” Witkowski says, “because by then I had moved to Pittsburgh; my drummer, Scott Latzky, was in New York; and my bass player, Daniel Foose, had moved to Austin. But they all came in, and then [trumpeter] Clay Jenkins came down from Rochester, New York.” Pittsburghers Roger Humphries (drums) and Dwayne Dolphin (bass) worked on three tracks as well.

Before embarking on the biography, Witkowski had visited Pittsburgh only once, when she was booked to play a solo piano concert in the city. She arrived more than a week early in order to begin her research in Mary Lou’s birthplace.  “I just started meeting a ton of musicians, and sitting in a lot and – and I felt that the jazz community here is so supportive. They come out to gigs, and I was embraced as part of the community pretty quickly.

“So then I started getting more work opportunities, like playing with the Pittsburgh Symphony, doing some of Mary Lou’s stuff, and doing some teaching for the Catholic diocese. And then in the fall of 2019, I decided to live here for seven weeks to continue my research.” She found more breathing room in Pittsburgh, especially compared to New York, which provided little time to relax and reflect.

Witkowski’s subsequent move to Pittsburgh has placed her in even closer touch with Williams, spiritually and, as it turns out, physically as well. “I now live exactly a mile from Mary Lou’s grave site,” she marvels, a fact unknown to her when she bought her house. “I walked there about six weeks ago, and the GPS led me exactly to her grave site. I really have felt, and I still feel, that Mary Lou has guided me here; I feel like she’s a companion. So it’s pretty meaningful to me to be able to do things like visit her any time I want.” 

1. Gjon Mili Jam Session (4:48)

2. Aries (from Zodiac Suite) (3:03)

3. Taurus (from Zodiac Suite) (3:36)

4. Cancer (from Zodiac Suite)/Act of Contrition (from Mary Lou’s Mass) (5:33)

5. Lonely Moments (5:58)

6. What’s Your Story, Morning Glory?/Ghost of Love (9:54)

7. Force of Nature (5:35)

8. Intermission (6:14)

9. Dirge Blues (7:08)

10. Carcinoma (3:56)

11. Stompin’ at the Savoy (6:06)

12. My Blue Heaven (8:54)

 

Deanna Witkowski, piano

Clay Jenkins, trumpet (1, 4, 5, 10)

Daniel Foose, bass (1-7, 10, 11)

Scott Latzky, drums (1-7, 11)

Dwayne Dolphin, bass (8, 9, 12)

Roger Humphries, drums (8, 9, 12)

Release Date: January 28, 2022

MCG Jazz 1055

PRE-ORDER

James Hall - Lattice (OUTSIDE IN MUSIC February 9, 2018)

Trombonist/Composer James Hall Weaves Together Diverse Styles and Inspirations To Form the Intricate and Stirring Lattice

Hall's second album as a leader, set for release February 9, 2018 from Outside In Music,

beautifully melds trombone and flute, chamber music and jazz, passion and complexity

 "James Hall and his band [have] an eclectic, but inviting, voice. Their music is accessible, but weaves in and out of some of the highest realms of Jazz and Classical tradition."

- Makoto Fujimura, International Arts Movement

Intricately weaving together voices, melodies, ideas and genres, Lattice is the alluring and inventive sophomore release from trombonist/composer James Hall. Due out February 9, 2018 from Outside In Music, the album is built around the harmonious combination of Hall's dexterous trombone and the virtuosic flute playing of Jamie Baum, a study in contrasts that proves remarkably pliable and expressive through Hall's inspired vision.

Lattice follows Hall's acclaimed debut, Soon We Will Not Be Here, in which he and his Thousand Rooms Quartet set the work of contemporary New York City-based poets to Third Stream-inspired music that struck a delicate balance between modern jazz and contemporary classical music. Lattice eschews the vocals of its predecessor and veers in a more recognizably jazz direction, though Hall's richly detailed writing maintains the sophisticated architecture of chamber music without forsaking the passion and propulsion of the best modern jazz.

To achieve those ends, Hall enlisted a skilled band with an elusive chemistry to breathe life into his compositions. In addition to Baum, he's joined by keyboardist Deanna Witkowski (Donny McCaslin), bassist Tom DiCarlo (Claudio Roditi, Sean Jones), and drummer Allan Mednard (Kurt Rosenwinkel, Aaron Parks). On two tracks the band is supplemented by in-demand saxophonist Sharel Cassity (Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis), whose fiery alto adds a new flavor to the often more contemplative styles of Hall and Baum.

A lattice necessarily begins with two pieces crossing, and for Hall that second piece was his now-wife, Kristen, to whom Lattice is dedicated. Their romance, engagement and marriage provided the spark that inspired him to begin writing this music. "I wanted to compose a project for two voices," Hall explains. "The idea of two voices in close counterpoint seemed like a nice parallel to the love story that was happening in my life at the time. It all came together with the interweaving of melody lines reflecting the interweaving of two lives."

More direct musical inspiration came from a few sources that Hall had long admired. One was legendary trombonist/composer/arranger Bob Brookmeyer's writing for two voices, exemplified by his work with Stan Getz and Jim Hall. Another was the interplay of bass trombone and flute on Herbie Hancock's classic album Speak Like a Child. Baum shared Hall's love for that album, and their bonding over it was key to her signing on for the project.

Two strands are not enough to make a latticework, however, and as a number of pieces intersect to form a pattern, so Hall's project expanded to encompass other voices and inspirations. He crossed paths with Mednard while both were touring with the retro-pop ensemble Postmodern Jukebox, while DiCarlo was suggested by Baum. Witkowski was introduced to Hall at the release concert for Soon We Will Not Be Here, and her interest in his music was matched by her gifts for interpreting it on both piano and Rhodes.

The scale of Hall's concerns expanded and intersected as well. While a new love - not to mention wedding planning - can be all consuming, eventually the outside world intrudes. Never has that been more true than in recent years, as a project conceived on an intimate personal scale inevitably took on a broader scope as harsh realities came to light. The injustices brought to light by the Black Lives Matter movement and the divisive aftermath of the 2016 presidential election forced Hall to widen his perspective. Again, Herbie Hancock proved inspirational; Speak Like a Child was released in the politically tumultuous year of 1968, its hopeful call for a more childlike and loving perspective a conscious refutation of the day's clashing ideologies.

"It's a pretty album produced at an ugly time," Hall says. "So as the world was sliding into an abyss and I was working on what for me was 'pretty' music, I was thinking of Herbie as a precedent."

The lilting melody of "Shoy" opens the album, tipping its hat to another form of interweaving - the hybridization of grapes to create new wine varietals. While living in Germany more than a decade ago, Hall worked on a vineyard that specialized in the Sheurebe grape - the title is a transliterated shortening of the name - which is a cross between Riesling and Silvaner. Cassity's supple alto kicks off Joe Henderson's familiar "Black Narcissus," which floats on Witkowski's airy Rhodes while being driven by Mednard's subtly roiling rhythm.

The title track is patient about bringing its divergent voices together, finally melding into a hopefully melodious theme at the song's halfway point. The simmering swing of "Brittle Stitch" muses on the fragility of any relationship and the care and attention they require, while "Gaillardia" does some of that work by hinting at Hall's wife's maiden name in the form of a flower. The elegiac "Traveler" is dedicated to the composer's great-uncle, whose passion for roaming the world and unconventional pairing with Hall's great-aunt both offered models to emulate. "Kind Folk" is one of a few gorgeous Kenny Wheeler tunes that entered Hall's songbook after the late trumpet great served as artist-in-residence during Hall's time at Lawrence University, while the bluesy "Terrace," featuring the full-throated moan of Hall's muted trombone, closes the album with a portrait of his adopted neighborhood in Brooklyn.

"A lattice is made up of many intersecting parts," Hall concludes. "As this project matured, even if I composed a piece thinking about myself and my wife, the lattice grew to incorporate everyone I met, everyone I engaged with. It touches on the question of where I sit in the lattice that is New York City, or on a larger scale, that is America in the 21st century. I take heart in the fact that there can be as many strands and intersections in a lattice as there are people or relationships in my life. Maybe it starts with me and my life or my family, but it doesn't have to end there."

www.jameshallmusic.com

www.outsideinmusic.com

James Hall

A trombonist and composer from Nebraska based in New York City, James Hall is a versatile musician and composer whose projects have spanned jazz, classical, Latin, and popular music. As a composer and bandleader, James was named a finalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Competition, won three ASCAPlus Awards for composition, and was a featured performer/composer at the 2012 Chelsea Music Festival. He has appeared on several recordings with Postmodern Jukebox, with whom he has toured Europe and the United States. His first CD as a composer/bandleader, Soon We Will Not Be Here, was released in October 2013 and featured his Thousand Rooms Quartet. James holds degrees from the Lawrence Conservatory of Music in Wisconsin and Aaron Copland School of Music in New York. His teachers have included Luis Bonilla, Hal Crook, Michael Dease, Nick Keelan, Ed Neumeister, and Fred Sturm.