On Force of Nature, her lovingly conceived and radiantly realized seventh album, Deanna Witkowski has created a multi-leveled master piece. 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.<\/p>\n
Released in the same year as Witkowski\u2019s first book \u2013 Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul, her detailed and engaging biography of Williams \u2013 Force of Nature caps off 20 years of immersive research into the life and work of the woman called \u201cThe First Lady of Jazz.\u201d<\/p>\n
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
\neducator 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 and, in absentia, a life coach for the deeply religious Witkowski, whose own resume includes an impressive number of
\naward-winning sacred-music compositions. \u201cI think of Mary Lou as a mentor, because she\u2019s someone who was able to really integrate her spirituality, her Catholicism, with her music,\u201d says Witkowski.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cCancer\u201d and \u201cAct of Contrition,\u201d from the
\nlate-60s Music for Peace. On \u201cStompin\u2019 at the Savoy,\u201d which Williams did not write, Witkowski refashions this Swing-era classic into a languorous ballad, well suited to reflect three events that affected Williams\u2019 life and career in the early 40s: her move to Sugar Hill in Harlem, the closing
\nof the Savoy Ballroom, and the 1943 Harlem Riots.<\/p>\n
On another album highlight, Witkowski crafts a small medley from the 1938 big-band blues \u201cWhat\u2019s Your Story, Morning Glory\u201d (one of Williams\u2019 earliest triumphs) and the contemporaneous but little-known \u201cGhost of Love\u201d; what starts as an achingly soulful trio meditation leads to a wide-ranging, effortlessly flowing and occasionally rhapsodic piano solo. Meanwhile, the title track \u2013 the only Witkowski original in the set \u2013 channels the vivacity of Mary Lou\u2019s entire oeuvre into a driving Latin beat colored by Witkowski\u2019s genre-spanning expertise.<\/p>\n
Over the last two decades, Williams\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Actually, the book came before the album. In 2019, when Witkowski first sojourned in Pittsburgh to research Mary Lou\u2019s life, she met with guitarist Marty Ashby, the driving force behind the jazz program at Manchester Craftsmen\u2019s Guild and the MCG Jazz label. \u201cI was telling him how the research was going and said, \u2018It\u2019s really a shame that I have this book coming out but I don’t have any recordings of myself doing Mary Lou’s music\u2019 \u2013 which I have been playing a lot, for quite a while. So Marty said, \u2018Well, we should do something about that.\u2019 So that’s kind of how it started.\u201d<\/p>\n
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. \u201cIt was pretty amazing that we could do this at all,\u201d Witkowski says, \u201cbecause 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.\u201d Pittsburghers Roger Humphries (drums) and Dwayne Dolphin (bass) worked on three tracks as well.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s birthplace. \u201cI just started meeting a ton of musicians, and
\nsitting in a lot and \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo then I started getting more work opportunities, like playing with the Pittsburgh Symphony, doing some of Mary Lou\u2019s 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.\u201d She found more breathing room in Pittsburgh, especially compared to New York, which provided little time to relax and reflect.<\/p>\n
Witkowski\u2019s subsequent move to Pittsburgh has placed her in even closer touch with Williams, spiritually and, as it turns out, physically as well. \u201cI now live exactly a mile from Mary Lou’s grave site,\u201d she marvels, a fact unknown to her when she bought her house. \u201cI 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
\nbe able to do things like visit her any time I want.\u201d<\/p>\n
More about Deanna Witkowski Born in New Hampshire, Witkowski attended high school in Rochester, NY, where she took classical piano lessons at nearby Roberts Wesleyan College. When she arrived at Wheaton College outside Chicago, she had no experience playing jazz, but was eager to learn. Wheaton had no jazz piano teacher, though; so Witkowski used her training as a flutist to learn the saxophone and join the college\u2019s jazz ensembles.<\/p>\n
Private instruction in improvisation followed. Witkowski attacked the challenge with her customary diligence, and quickly found gig opportunities around Chicago while attending DePaul University. In 1997 she moved to New York, supporting herself as a church music
\ndirector and composer as she continued to hone her jazz skills. In 2002, five years after her move, she won the Great American Jazz Piano Competition.<\/p>\n
Witkowski\u2019s interest in Mary Lou Williams was sparked by the legendary jazz pianist and educator Dr. Billy Taylor, who asked Witkowski to perform at the 2000 Mary Lou Williams Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. At the time, Witkowski knew next to nothing
\nof the festival\u2019s namesake. \u201cI had heard Williams\u2019s name, and knew that she had been a pioneering jazz musician who had mentored Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk,\u201d Witkowski has written, \u201cbut I had not yet listened to that much of her music.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the term \u201cForce of Nature\u201d certainly suited Mary Lou Williams, it\u2019s been accurately applied to Witkowski as well. She has studied Cuban music with Chucho Valdes and Hilario Duran; learned Portuguese to improve her phrasing of Brazilian music; and in 1996 spent three months teaching music in Kenya, which expanded her rhythm vocabulary. She has also delved into the work of Frederic Chopin, performing her arrangements of his works next to improvisations inspired by him, in concerts and on the justly praised album Raindrop: Improvisations with Chopin (2014). Critics have consistently lauded the ease with which she moves among classical, jazz, Latin, and sacred music.<\/p>\n
Track listing:
\n1. Gjon Mili Jam Session (4:48)
\n2. Aries (from Zodiac Suite) (3:03)
\n3. Taurus (from Zodiac Suite) (3:36)
\n4. Cancer (from Zodiac Suite)\/Act of Contrition (from Mary Lou\u2019s Mass) (5:33)
\n5. Lonely Moments (5:58)
\n6. What\u2019s Your Story, Morning Glory?\/Ghost of Love (9:54)
\n7. Force of Nature (5:35)
\n8. Intermission (6:14)
\n9. Dirge Blues (7:08)
\n10. Carcinoma (3:56)
\n11. Stompin\u2019 at the Savoy (6:06)
\n12. My Blue Heaven (8:54)
\nPersonnel:
\nDeanna Witkowski, piano
\nClay Jenkins, trumpet (1, 4, 5, 10)
\nDaniel Foose, bass (1-7, 10, 11)
\nScott Latzky, drums (1-7, 11)
\nDwayne Dolphin, bass (8, 9, 12)
\nRoger Humphries, drums (8, 9, 12)<\/p>\n
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