Mary Lou Williams was a force for jazz, a force for compassion, and a driving force behind the start of the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival in the 1960s.
Mary Lou’s Birthday was May 8th - and in this month of May, a number of important events celebrating her life and career are on tap.
May 12th and 13th, the 27th annual Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival will be held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Hosted by NEA Jazz Master Dee Dee Bridgewater. Included on the agenda, some of today’s finest women in jazz: Doreen Ketchens, Somi, Camille Thurman, and the Dee Dee Bridgewater Big Band.
The program is a collaboration with the Pittsburgh-based Mary Lou Williams Institute and presented in recognition of Williams’ 113th birthday. Representatives from the Institute will discuss the film and the legacy of one of the greatest jazz artists of all time following the screening.
We visit with the founder of the Mary Lou Williams Institute, Bobbie Ferguson, about the event - and also about Bobbie’s memories of Mary Lou - her Aunt - and Mary Lou’s love of Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh was very important to Mary Lou Williams, and plays an important part in a new biography about her musical, personal and spiritual journey.
Pianist and composer Deanna Witkowski is the author of “Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul,” which is just hitting bookstores and online retail, now.
We first had a long chat with Deanna back in October of 2019, which was not quite a year after her introduction to playing in Pittsburgh for a December 8th 2018 concert at the Hillman Center at Shady Side Academy.
In the days months and years since that first interview, we have all had changes, especially during COVID-19. For Deanna, it led her to finish and publish this well regarded book about a jazz icon written for a broad audience, plus Deanna’s enrollment in a doctoral program in Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, leaving her longtime home in New York City and moving to Pittsburgh, full-time.
Our chat from 2021 about Deanna’s Mary Lou Williams book is wide ranging and delves into Mary Lou’s music and relationships, and also into how much Mary Lou cared about Pittsburgh and her family and roots in the Steel City.
Also - we talk about the amazing pictures of Mary Lou Williams in the the William P Gottlieb Collection at the Library of Congress. It is a treasure trove of amazing photographs, now available to the public - and includes shots of Mary Lou’s piano, which is now on display in Pittsburgh at the Heinz History Center.
Also on the program - we go from the 2021 interview about the book “Music for the Soul” to an update with Deann as she’s finished her classwork and is now working on finishing her dissertation for the Jazz Studies program at Pitt.
We also visit with Bobbie Ferguson - a Neice of Mary Lou Williams - Bobbie lives in Pittsburgh and has fond memories as a youth with her aunt - and now, Bobbie has formed a new non-profit calls the Mary Lou Williams Institute.
The Scene - Thursday at 6, Friday and Saturday at noon, Sunday at 5 on WZUM.
Milt Orent, Mary Lou Williams, Tadd Dameron, Dizzy Gilespie - at Mary Lou’s Baldwin upright piano at her apartment in New York, 1947. Gottlieb Collection, Library of Congress
Dizzy Gillespie Mary Lou Williams Tadd Dameron Hank Jones Milt Orent Dixie Bailey and Jack Teagarden Mary Lou Williams apartment New York NY ca Aug 1947 William P Gottlieb Collection, Library of Congress`
Deanna Witkowski, Mary Lou Williams