Bio:
As an energetic six year old, Ben Williams was as curious as a cat. Ben’s mother worked for Congressman John Conyers (an avid jazz lover) on Capitol Hill, so when she took the youngster into the office on his school break, a watchful eye was in order. One afternoon, while rambling around Conyers’ large, leather appointed office, Ben discovered a huge object that instantly captured his imagination. The shiny upright bass was like nothing the kid had ever seen. He tapped on it. He popped a string. He climbed up on it. “What is this thing?” he wondered.
Twenty years later, Ben Williams is still surprised at that chance meeting. “Its low frequency attracted me,” Williams recalls, “the way the instrument felt when I touched it. Then later, just the feeling of playing a groove. When you play a bass the whole instrument vibrates. It almost feels like the spirit of another human being. It’s like dancing with somebody and being in full contact with them. And the sound of the instrument appealed to me. It’s warm and deep and it resonated with me.”
On the eve of his first CD, State of Art, Ben Williams is one of the most sought after bassists in the world, his resume a who’s who of jazz wisdom: Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Terence Blanchard, Christian McBride Big Band, Nicholas Payton, Paquito D’Rivera, Cyrus Chestnut, Benny Golson, George Duke, Eric Reed, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Roy Hargrove, and Mulgrew Miller, to name a few.
Ben’s warm, woody tone, flowing groove, melodic phrasing, and storytelling approach has found favor among musicians, but also a larger audience. A bandleader, musical educator, composer, and electric and acoustic bassist, Ben was the winner of the 2009 Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition, a prestigious and important award that has propelled many a promising career. Working with New York’s finest jazz musicians even before graduating from Juilliard, Williams showcased his band, Sound Effect, at The Jazz Gallery in New York, receiving an enthusiastic New York Times review. Writer Nate Chinen stated “Williams took several long solos in his first set at The Jazz Gallery . . . and each one felt more like an entitlement than an indulgence.” Williams has recorded and performed regularly as a member of bands led by saxophonist Marcus Strickland, pianist Jacky Terrasson, and vibraphonist Stefon Harris. He’s led his own groups at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Harlem Stage, Rubin Museum of Art, Tribeca PAC in New York City, and SPAC in Saratoga Springs, NY. State of Art signals Williams’ emergence as a prominent voice in the greater jazz community.
Growing up in an artistic family of musicians, visual artists, and rappers, young Ben Williams didn’t plan on being a bassist and bandleader. He wanted to be a rock star. His heroes were Prince and Michael Jackson, not Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. Once again, a chance meeting altered his future.
“I’d been playing piano by ear, but I wanted to play guitar,” Williams recalls. “My middle school offered a strings class where figured I could learn guitar. Then I got there and it was all violins and cellos - no guitars. So I choose the coolest instrument I saw, the bass. It just looked right.”
Williams was a natural. He excelled on both bass and piano, and once enrolled at the Duke Ellington High School of the Arts, he became a star student, performing in jazz band, gospel choir, and orchestra, as well as extracurricular gigs. Williams graduated with honors and a Best in Instrumental Music Award. He garnered scholarships from the Fish Middleton Scholarship Competition of the East Coast Jazz Festival, the International Society of Bassist’s Competition, the Steans Music Institute, the Duke Ellington Jazz Society, the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) and DC Public Schools City-Wide Annual Piano Competition. Williams received his Bachelor’s in Music Education at Michigan State University in 2007, and his Master’s in Music from the Juilliard School in 2009.
“In high school I dedicated myself to the bass and to jazz,” Williams says. “I knew this could be a profession, and if I could do what I love for a living -- man, what is better than that? You always feel like a student playing jazz, there is so much to learn. There’s never a point where you think you’ve arrived. I am trying to get better every day. Even Roy Haynes, when you see him play you get a sense that he is still trying to find new things.”
Like many self-aware jazz musicians, Ben Williams has myriad influences, from “Wayne Shorter, Stevie Wonder and Duke Ellington” to “hip-hop and gospel, Little Dragon, Billy Joel, Marvin Gaye.” And like his colleagues in the new guard of jazz, Williams is constantly looking ahead, seeking the music’s potential and his place in it.
“I’ve worked with Stefon Harris’ Blackout for the past few years,” Williams cites. “He has definitely been a huge influence in my concept of playing music. We have a similar viewpoint to music and jazz. He’s very much about addressing modern times and not rehashing old material. To really interpret what is happening right now, a lot of jazz musicians are into hip-hop and R&B, but they don’t put that into their music. We keep up with the times and we’re not afraid to put that into our music.”
To other musician’s music Williams brings his great natural skill and determination to explore, to expand boundaries while sustaining tradition. State of Art is a mature statement stamped with his voice, the next step in Ben Williams’ evolution.
“I wanted to make an album that regular nine-to-five people could enjoy,” Williams says; “and to make a deep artistic statement as well. I like music that grooves, and I make sure that my music feels good.
“I always bring a certain energy to whatever the musical situation is,” the soft-spoken musician adds. “I try to be a team player and be supportive, but also, I try to add my voice to the situation. It’s a fine balance between putting your stamp on things and being supportive. I’ve found that balance pretty well. The diversity of my musical upbringing has allowed me to be comfortable in many different musical situations. I don’t try to sound like anyone else, I just try to be honest musically and bring a youthful spirit.”
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).