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Perusing the jazz records at a vinyl outlet a few years ago, artist Kye Potter found a worn cassette by American pianist Jessica Williams. It looked like the classic independent effort. "The labels had come off the tape," he says. "It was copied at home, with printed inserts, a touch of highlighter to emphasize the artwork, and issued on her own label, Ear Art."

Being a collector particularly interested in the American musical avant garde following John Cage, Potter was captivated by a tape titled Prepared Piano. However, it felt unusual from Williams, who was primarily recognized for making sparkling jazz in the direct lineage of Thelonious Monk and Errol Garner.

If the west coast jazz circuit knew her as a sonic explorer – during her performances, she required pianos without the cover to facilitate to get inside and play the strings directly – it was a facet that seldom found its way on her records.

"I'd never heard anything like it," Potter states regarding the tape. So he emailed Williams to ask if any more recordings had been made. She provided four recordings of modified piano from the 1980s – two live, two studio creations. Although she had ceased playing publicly some time before, she also enclosed some contemporary pieces. "She sent me probably 15 or 16 electronic music cassettes – entire projects," Potter explains.

A Legacy Release: Blue Abstraction

Potter collaborated with Williams throughout the pandemic to put together Blue Abstraction, an album of prepared piano pieces that was released in late 2025. Tragically, Williams passed away in 2022, during the project. She was seventy-three. "She was facing health and money problems," Potter states. Williams had been open regarding her difficulties following spinal surgery in 2012, which ended her ability to tour, and a cancer discovery in 2017. "However, I believe her personality, strength, self-confidence and the calmness she found through meditative practices all came out in conversation."

In later electronic, groove-focused releases such as Blood Music (2008) – boldly labeled "NOT JAZZ" – and the two Virtual Miles releases (2006 and 2007), you hear a musician attempting to break free of expectation. Blue Abstraction, with its fascinatingly modified piano reverberations, shows that that impulse stretched back decades. Instead of a consistent piano sound, the instrument creates numerous distinct sonic impressions: what could be hammered dulcimers, gamelan, far-off chimes, animals rattling around cages, and little machines coughing to start. It possesses a tremendously urgent energy, with massive roars dissolving into growling, sharply accented riffs.

Critical Acclaim

Guitarist Jeff Parker states he is a fan of this "gorgeous, diverse, exploratory and nuanced" record. Jessika Kenney, who has collaborated with Sarah Davachi and Sunn O))), experienced Williams play while attending school in Seattle in the 1990s, and was drawn to the power of her music, but knew little of her dreamlike prepared piano before this release. Shortly after witnessing Williams live, she traveled to Indonesia, seeking "the dreamlike quality of improvised singing of the Javanese gamelan," she recalls. "Currently, that feels completely natural as a link with her. I only wish it was understood by me then."

Historical Influences

Williams’ prepared sounds have technical precursors: consider John Cage’s altered keyboards, or the groundbreaking approaches of idiosyncratic composer Henry Cowell. What is remarkable is how successfully she merges these new sounds with her own bluesy vocabulary at the keyboard. The stylistic approach scarcely deviates from that which she cultivated in a body of work extending to more than 80 albums, meaning the new trippily tinted sounds are powered by the effervescent force of an improviser in complete command. It’s electrifying music.

An Eternal Tinkerer

Throughout her life, Williams experimented with the piano. "Striking keys produced hues in my mind," she once explained. She received her first upright piano in 1954. On her blog, she shared the anecdote of her first "dismantling" – "as I’ve done for all pianos," she noted: Williams removed a panel from beneath the piano’s keyboard, and put it on the floor alongside her stool. "Seeking rhythm, my left foot turned into the hi-hat pedal," she wrote.

Initially, Williams trained in classical piano at the Peabody Conservatory. Initial experiences with the classical repertoire led her to Rachmaninov; she presented his famous Prelude in C minor to her piano teacher, who reprimanded her for embellishing a section. However, he detected her potential: the following week, he introduced her to Dave Brubeck to play. She learned his Take Five within a week.

Industry Disappointment

In time, Brubeck call Williams "one of the greatest pianists I have ever heard," and McCoy Tyner was similarly impressed. Williams’ 2004 Grammy-nominated album Live at Yoshi’s, Vol 1, shows her deep absorption in jazz history, plus her trademark playful pianistic wit. Nevertheless, despite her long journeys to learn about the genre – first, to the more modern styles of Coltrane, Miles and Dolphy, before working her way back to Monk and Garner to Fats Waller and James P Johnson – she quickly became disenchanted with the jazz world.

Upon relocating from Philadelphia to San Francisco, Williams met the great Mary Lou Williams. Inspired by the elder pianist's advice ("Don’t ever let anyone stop you"), she became a forceful, open critic of her scene: of the meagre pay, the jazz "boys’ club," the "jazz hang" – namely smoking and drinking as the main method of landing performances – and of a corporate industry benefiting from the efforts of struggling artists.

"I am repeatedly disappointed at the nature of the ‘jazz world’ and its failure to coordinate, express, and advocate for a set, any set, of fundamental principles," she stated in the album notes to her 2008 release Deep Monk. Similarly, the writing on her blog was eclectic, unflinching, openly political and feminist, though she seldom talked about her experiences as a trans woman. A writer pointed out: "To add to the sexism … that chased her from her desired musical domain for a period, imagine what kind of cruel nonsense she must have suffered as a trans woman in the jazz scene of the early 80s."

A Journey of Independence

Williams’ career evolved into self-sufficiency. Following a period in the vibrant Bay Area scene, she relocated to smaller cities such as Sacramento and Santa Cruz, moving to Portland in 1991, and later relocating to an even quieter place, to Yakima, Washington State, in the 2010s. Williams saw early on the immense possibilities of the internet