“I no longer direct the music. The music takes me where it wants to go. I choose a vehicle, and that is all. If I can not find one that suits me well, I make one up on the spot, or I write one…” -- Jessica Williams, liner note to Touch. 

Touch

Touch is essentially a follow-up to Jessica Williams luscious solo, Art of the Piano, again recorded live at the Triple Door in Seattle on the same piano, again on Origin. “My touch on the piano is my singular ‘voice’…Bill [Evans] and I shared a similar regard for the importance of touch and the generation of tonal color,” notes Williams in her (as usual!) extensive and personal liner notes.  And even more than Evans, Williams regards the solo instrument as the purest form of performance and artistic creation, having devoted much of her professional career to a one-on-one with the audience. She even goes so far as to state that “a lot of the ‘new music,’ accompanied by unintelligible piano miseries and drum sophistry, all underpinned by fallacious bass playing, is one good reason to pursue a career in solo piano, if only to balance the scales of good and evil.” 

If her attitude spells “take no prisoners,” so does her solo piano offer no compromises or pretension. As a longtime fan of Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett and Fred Hersch, I know of no piano soloist who surpasses Jessica Williams’ ability to evoke emotion from a single note. Or from the lingering sustain of a single note or chord. Touch brings magic to four original compositions and exquisite covers of Gershwin, Coltrane, Mingus and Green/Heyman. Notes Jessica, “I chose the pieces here mainly for their simplicity and their use of space…I release these creations into the wild with hopes that some listeners may find their qualities healing, life-affirming, and filled with the joy and the rapture with which they were made.” 

Jessica’s words as well as her notes speak for themselves on Touch; the covers are given as much personal treatment as her own compositions, and all together stands as an elegant suite guided by a single (or make that two) hands. The distant darkness of “I Loves You Porgy” needs no lyric; minor key shifts and sweet extended harmonies say it all with tinges of blue. Coltrane’s “Wise One” is majestic, ominous, nearly hymnal, tremulous and defiant. A brighter mood prevails on “I Cover the Water Front,” Williams breaking into stride and light musical commentary. Appropriately, “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” (Mingus’ salute to Lester Young) has a funereal darkness, a respectful tone and hints of a world beyond. 

If she was not such a talented performer, Jessica Williams might nonetheless have a place in jazz history as a composer. “Soldaji” offers a hauntingly beautiful melody, a touch suggesting a harp, particularly at the end of lines where a flourish of high notes is as startling as it is songful. “Rosa Parks” evokes a gentle soul of profound strength, as its namesake, while “Gail’s Song” sways, not quite sadly, evoking a bit of “Porgy and Bess” in the blue touch and hints of pathos, in Jessica’s exquisite creation of space. The final “Simple Things” is not so simple, pulling together many of the gorgeous details that fill the album, space, fluidity, grace, flourishes that land on air currents and linger. 

Music served by touch, the point of interaction between pianist and instrument, provides the point of interaction between pianist and listener. 

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