Jessica Williams continues to amaze with her endless versatility on All Alone (MaxJazz). This collection of standards and originals seems to belie her own comment: “I’ve always wanted to be a musician. Sometimes, all alone, I am.” After listening to this CD, one must paraphrase Descartes: “I swing, therefore I am.” “As Time Goes By” and “In a Sentimental Mood” contain nods in the direction of Erroll Garner that evolve so naturally after playing her clean single lines over a gentle jazz march. “Warm Valley” is another Ellington gem that should be taken out and aired more often. The same could be said of Irving Berlin’s “They Say It’s Wonderful”: too many pianists consider it a singer’s turf. Regarding another Berlin chestnut, “All Alone,” Williams decided to have some fun. She takes it as a straight waltz but refuses to stoop to “oom-pah-pah,” so there is plenty of split stride. By the fourth chorus, she shows her impatience with the original chords and caps it off with a bit of Monkish mischief. She dabbles in the pentatonic scale in “Toshiko,” an original that shows her reverence for her Japanese colleague, Toshiko Akiyoshi. It’s a first-rate album that underscores Williams’ strengths: technique, harmonic taste and her love for swinging.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time