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While browsing the jazz section at a vinyl outlet a few years ago, producer Kye Potter found a worn cassette by pianist and composer Jessica Williams. It looked like the ultimate homemade project. "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 put out on her own label, Ear Art."

As a collector particularly interested in the American musical avant garde following John Cage, Potter was fascinated by a tape titled Prepared Piano. But it appeared out of character for Williams, who was primarily recognized for producing sparkling jazz in the straight-ahead tradition of Thelonious Monk and Errol Garner.

If the West Coast scene knew her as a musical experimenter – during her performances, she asked for pianos with the top removed to allow her to access the interior and pluck the strings – it was a aspect that rarely made it on her albums.

"I'd never heard anything like it," Potter states regarding the tape. Consequently, he contacted Williams to inquire if additional recordings had been made. She responded with four recordings of prepared piano from the 1980s – two live, two recorded in a studio. Although she had long since retired previously, she also enclosed some newer material. "She sent me approximately 15 or 16 synth tapes – entire projects," says Potter.

A Legacy Release: Blue Abstraction

Potter collaborated with Williams throughout the pandemic to compile Blue Abstraction, an album of altered piano works that was issued in late 2025. But Williams died in 2022, part way through the project. She was 73. "She was facing health and money problems," Potter reveals. Williams had been public about her hardships following spinal surgery in 2012, which prevented her from tour, and a diagnosis of cancer in 2017. "But I think her character, fortitude, assurance and the calmness she found through her spiritual pursuits all shone through 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 pianist seeking to transcend tradition. Blue Abstraction, with its fascinatingly modified piano resonances, demonstrates that that desire reached back decades. Rather than a consistent piano sound, the piano creates many different sonic associations: what could be cimbaloms, Indonesian percussion, far-off chimes, creatures in enclosures, and little machines spluttering into life. It possesses a incredibly pressing energy, with massive roars giving way to growling, sharply accented riffs.

Critical Acclaim

Musician Jeff Parker states he is a fan of this "stunning, eclectic, adventurous and detailed" record. Composer Jessika Kenney, who has worked with Sarah Davachi and Sunn O))), experienced Williams play while studying in Seattle in the 1990s, and was attracted to the force of her music, but knew little of her otherworldly prepared piano prior to this release. Shortly after seeing Williams live, she traveled to Indonesia, in search of "surrealism in the improvisational vocals of the Javanese gamelan," she recalls. "Today, that appears completely natural as a link with her. I only wish it was understood by me then."

Artistic Forebears

These modified tones have historical forerunners: think of John Cage’s modified instruments, or the groundbreaking approaches of idiosyncratic composer Henry Cowell. What is remarkable is how masterfully she blends these innovative timbres with her own jazzy lexicon at the keyboard. The stylistic approach scarcely deviates from that which she honed in a catalog extending to more than 80 albums, ensuring that the new trippily tinted sounds are fueled by the effervescent force of an improviser in complete command. That's thrilling stuff.

An Eternal Tinkerer

Williams had always explored the piano. "I hit the notes, and I saw colours," she once explained. She obtained her first vertical piano in 1954. Through her online journal, she shared the anecdote of her first "dismantling" – "a practice I continued for all pianos," she wrote: Williams took off a panel from below the piano’s keyboard, and put it on the floor alongside her stool. "Requiring percussion, my left foot acted as the hi-hat," she explained.

Initially, Williams trained in classical piano at the Peabody Conservatory. Initial experiences with the traditional pieces led her to Rachmaninov; she took his famous Prelude in C minor to her piano teacher, who reprimanded her for altering a section. Yet he recognized her potential: the following week, he brought her Dave Brubeck to play. She figured out his Take Five within a week.

Industry Disappointment

In time, Brubeck describe Williams "one of the greatest pianists I have ever heard," and McCoy Tyner was equally admiring. Williams’ 2004 Grammy-nominated album Live at Yoshi’s, Vol 1, displays her deep absorption in jazz history, plus her signature clever pianistic wit. Nevertheless, despite her dedicated efforts to learn about the genre – first, to the contemporary approaches of Coltrane, Miles and Dolphy, before tracing a path back to Monk and Garner to Fats Waller and James P Johnson – she soon grew disappointed with the jazz world.

After moving from Philadelphia to San Francisco, Williams encountered the great Mary Lou Williams. Buoyed up by the senior musician's advice ("Don’t ever let anyone stop you"), she became a outspoken, vocal critic of her scene: of the poor compensation, the jazz "boys’ club," the "typical jazz socializing" – namely smoking and drinking as the key way of getting gigs – and of a profit-driven sector benefiting from the efforts of artists in need.

"I am continually disappointed at the truth of the ‘jazz world’ and its inability to coordinate, express, and advocate for a set, any set, of core values," she stated in the liner notes to her 2008 release Deep Monk. In the same vein, the writing on her blog was eclectic, unflinching, decidedly ideological and feminist, though she rarely discussed her experiences as a trans woman. A writer pointed out: "To add to the sexism … that drove her from her preferred musical arena for a period, imagine what kind of inhumane bullshit she must have suffered as a trans woman in the jazz scene of the early 80s."

Forging an Autonomous Career

Her professional path arced towards self-sufficiency. Following a period in the active Bay Area scene, she moved through smaller cities such as Sacramento and Santa Cruz, settling in Portland in 1991, and later moving smaller still, to Yakima, Washington State, in the 2010s. Williams recognized early the huge potential of the internet