Jessica Williams (musician)

Jessica Williams
Jessica Williams
	Williams in 2007
Background information
Born	March 17, 1948; Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Genres	Jazz, Electronic
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instruments	Piano, synthesizers, trap drums, organ, Contrabass
Years active	1960s–present
Labels	Red and Blue, Candid, Concord, Maxjazz, Timeless, Hep, Jazz Focus
Website	www.jessicawilliams.com

Jessica Williams (born March 17, 1948) is an American jazz pianist and composer.

Early life

Jessica Jennifer Williams was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 17, 1948. She started playing the piano at age four, began music lessons with a private teacher at five, and at age seven was enrolled into the Peabody Preparatory. She studied classical music and ear training with Richard Aitken and George Bellows at the Peabody Conservatory of Music.

She began performing jazz in her teens, playing with Richie Cole , Buck Hill, and Mickey Fields. Her main influences were not pianists but horn players, most notably Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

Williams was born with A.I.S., or Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, an intersex condition in which there is a partial or complete inability of many cells in the affected genetic male to respond to androgenic hormones. A.I.S. is the largest single entity that leads to 46,XY undermasculinized genitalia. Not known in medicine at the time of her birth, she was misgendered as male in 1948. The double-helix model of DNA structure was first published in the journal Nature by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, five years after her birth.

After corrective surgery, she began performing regularly with the "Philly Joe" Jones band in New Jersey, and with Lex Humphries in Philadelphia and New York City, before moving to the West Coast in October 1976.^[1]

In 1977, Williams moved to San Francisco, where she played in various house bands at the Keystone Korner. She played in the bands of Eddie Harris, Tony Williams, Stan Getz, Bobby Hutcherson, and Charlie Haden, eventually leading her own jazz trio, and recording prolifically for the next several decades.

In 1997, she established her own record label, Red and Blue Recordings. She also started her publishing company, JJW Music/ASCAP, and an internet mail order business, jessicawilliams.com.

She also appeared in festivals and venues worldwide, including The Purcell Room in London, The Bern Jazz Festival, The Monterey Jazz Festival, The New Morning in Paris, Spivey Hall in Georgia, and hundreds of other venues. She was a guest on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and Marian McPartland's acclaimed Piano Jazz Show on NPR, as well as being interviewed by the BBC in Brecon, Wales.

Jessica Williams now lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest, and no longer does jazz tours. She continues to make new music, including electronic music and neoclassical music, and remains a lifelong advocate of Civil Rights, particularly Trans Rights.

Williams from the album cover for The Real Deal (photo by E Arc)

↑ Yanow, Scott. "Jessica Williams | Biography & History | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 19 November 2016.

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