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White pianist Jessica Williams (born and raised in Baltimore, classically trained) began to improvise on the East Coast in the vein of Thelonious Monk but in a rather shy manner, both as a solo performer, for example in the psychological vignettes of Portal of Antrim (1976) and of the double-LP PortraitsOrgonomic Music (june 1979).
The piano solo remained her favorite format, yielding collections such as
Rivers of Memory (1980),
Update (may 1982),
Nothin' But the Truth (1986),
and
Heartland (december 1989), containing longer compositions such as
The Cosmic Wheel (10:56) and
Ishtar (15:51).
Despite recording very little under her own name, her technique achieved supernatural status, a worthy disciple of Art Tatum although in an altogether different vein. By the time she resurfaced with And Then There's This (february 1990) in a trio, she had become one of the greatest living virtuosi of the piano. Unfortunately the consequence was that she devoted most of her recordings to interpretations of jazz standards, returning to creative terrain only with Inventions (january 1995) and Joy (january 1996).
Williams moved to Sacramento, then to Oregon in 1993 and later in Washington state.
Dedicated to You (Red and Blue Records, 2000)
This Side Up (2002) documents a piano trio.
Without Walls (2003), that contains the ten-minute Slant and the 15-minute Mood Swing,
the concept album Billy's Theme (2006),
Songs For A New Century (january 2008),
the live The Art Of The Piano
(april 2009), containing
Triple Door Blues (9:14),
Love and Hate (12:57) and
Lonnie's Lament (9:24),
and the other live Touch (2010),
marked her return to original
compositions after a series of cover albums.
Songs Of Earth (2012) contains seven extended piano solos.
With Love (january 2014) contains nine more solos.
Blue Abstraction - Prepared Piano Project 1985-1987 (Pre-Echo, 2025) compiles eight pieces performed on a custom grand piano (altered "by placing vibrating and/or muting elements on top of and between the strings at varying distances across the harp, some sounding like bells or gongs, others like percussion instruments").
Jessica Williams died in 2022 at the age of 74.
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