Review of Mary Lou Williams Event

"The Recordings of Mary Lou Williams: A 50-Year Retrospective"

Father Peter O'Brien's presentation was very entertaining, though I came 20 minutes late. 

It appears to have started with a short documentary that provided a general overview of her life. 

Then the rest of the presentation  consisted of various pictures and music recordings throughout her career, beginning with Andy Kirk's band and 1929 to the early 1930s recordings. I really enjoyed the earlier swing and Kansas City-style sides. I also loved her rendition of "Tea for Two" and some of her later arrangements for Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie, especially "Trumpet Madness" and "In the Land of Oo Bla Dee." Due to Father O'Brien's often talking a little too much, he had to rush the rest of the presentation and skip about 4 songs in order to play parts of her Zodiac Suite and her Jazz Mass, which included a jazzy version of Gloria that had the crowd rocking. Unfortunately, the video was shown on a rather small projector in the church but it was worth just to hear a man who worked with Mary LouWilliams so closely reflect on her career and jazz history.

However, one must wish the event had started earlier so that Father O'Brien would have had more time to share stories, reminisce, recollect, and show the rest of the video parts that were skipped. However, the pictures were fascinating and contained a lot of personal information about her life, such as her love for shoes, nice blouses, important people in her life, and the influence of Catholicism on her music. The bluesy elements of her Kansas-style were still present in parts of her Zodiac Suite, which was rich in heavy bass lines.

Saturday Night Concert at The Overture Review

Well, the concert was fun but I didn't enjoy the vocalist and the poet. They also started late. Instead of letting the band perform at 7:30, Father O'Brien and a few other speakers had to talk for 30 minutes. The first half of the set was just songs from Mary Lou Williams' Zodiac Suite. I hadn't heard most of it before, so it was new and interesting. 10 of the songs were written for a trio and the final two pieces were solo piano songs. However, it bothered me that Gerri Allen and the bassist Davis had sheet music for all of the first set and parts of the second set. Don't you think jazz musicians should have all the music memorized? I also thought the drummer Kossa Overall was great. He may not be the best drummer in the world, but he is young, has an afro, and played a great solo in the second set that had me groovin' and swingin'. The poet, Fabu, on the other hand, was terrible. She was out of place, her poetry was unnecessary, and trite. She didn't have anything new to say about Mary Lou's life and what she did say was superficial. She endeavored to imbue her poetry with that stereotypical pretentious artsy atmosphere which is just unbearable. Carmen Lundy, the vocalist, has an interesting voice but I would not go out of my way to listen to her recordings. She only sang 2 or 3 songs, and then left the stage. It was obvious that they had practiced together though, because during those 2-3 songs, the combo were synchronized. As for the bassist, his solos were interesting and just lovely to hear.