With Love

Pianist Jessica Williams produces for the piano in With Love that Rebecca Parris and Beat Kaestli do in jazz vocals...a perfect jazz ballads recording. Williams does so in a solo piano setting not unlike what she has used in the past most recently on Song of the Earth (Origin, 2012), Touch (Origin, 2010) and The Art of the Piano (Origin, 2009). This is a recording the eclipses the majority of what passes for "ambient" or "new age" piano music by light years. Williams' performance only has one comparison and that is to the brilliant post-modern rendering achieved by Martial Solal on Live at the Village Vanguard: I Can't Give You Anything But Love (Cam Jazz, 2009). Origin Records captures all of Williams' sumptuous playing on her personal piano. The effect is direct and penetrating, establishing a prime listening environment for these time honored ballads. A proper exercise would be comparing the performances of "My Foolish Heart" on this recording and those of Parris and Kaestli. What Williams brings out in an instrumental interpretation of these ballads is the mind's eye of the creative soul. While lyrics remain paramount, listening to Williams' gentle deconstructions reveals the bare essence of the music in such a way that a proper communion between lyrics and melody can be understood.