With his suite Black, Brown and Beige, he had shown that it was possible to unite jazz with the formal ambitions of classical music, and now Williams also pushed herself compositionally. In addition ...

This week, a birthday wish for a forgotten Philly singer, a super set of piano trios featuring a new tribute to Mary Lou Williams. I work out my issues with jazz guitar with some ear opening duets, ...

Jason Moran, pianist. Williams’s “Night Life” is a blistering three-minute dance. It’s the kind of song that raises your heart rate because Mary Lou creates so much drama by pressurizing ...

A piano was rolled into Mary Lou Williams’ hospital room in North Carolina. The master jazz pianist was writing one last piece of music. She never finished it.

Mary Lou Williams only spent a dozen years in Kansas City during its ... Mary Lou Williams Took Kansas City Music To The ... Though originally written for trio and solo piano in 1944, ...

In these 20 tracks, you'll find Williams' prowess as a composer and pianist, as well as proof of her expansive influence on jazz and American music as a whole.

Mary Lou Williams was born in 1910, the second of 11 children, to a black family in Atlanta. When she was 5, her family moved to Pittsburgh, where she mastered the piano. Her skills were useful in ...

This is the 10th year the Kennedy Center has presented the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. More than 100 women have performed in that time, but there remains one woman whose music has ...

The final one was "Music for Peace," which acquired its better-known name of "Mary Lou's Mass" when it was adapted for dance by Alvin Ailey. Williams' piano playing continued to evolve, too.

When Mary Lou Williams arrived at Duke in 1977 as the University’s first artist-in-residence, ... she was playing the piano, and by age six, her music career had kicked off. “ ...