Pianist/composer Mary Lou Williams was a major component in the history of jazz. She wrote hundreds of compositions, arranged for Ellington and Goodman, was a teacher/friend to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell and had a killer left hand which collaborated with an elegant right hand, making her music hugely attractive to listeners and challenging to fellow musicians. In 1945 she finished a three-year project, the amazing “Zodiac Suite,” with astrological nods to friends Duke Ellington, Ben Webster, Vic Dickenson, Eartha Kitt and Barney Josephson, who employed her at his Cafe Society, among many others.
On his new recording, Zodiac Suite, outstanding pianist Aaron Diehl has approached Williams’ creation, unearthing new possibilities and pathways from this landmark work. Alongside musical friends, and the orchestral collective The Knights, he found a vibrant new life in the “Zodiac Suite” that he recently sat down to chat about with me.
Diehl will be performing works by Duke Ellington, William Grant Still and Anton Dvorak with the New Jersey Symphony at NJPAC on Saturday, October 14.
Listen to our conversation, above.
Interview Highlights:
Gary Walker: You grew up in the church yourself, right?
Aaron Diehl: I did. Both my grandparents and my mother, we went to church every Sunday. My grandfather sang in the choir, so I was fortunate to be exposed to music. That's one of my earliest musical experiences. It was a very unique church in that it was a Catholic church, but it was predominantly African American. There were two services. There was one that was more traditional. And one was like a gospel mass, if you will. It was interesting seeing the Black American culture in the mass setting and having the different parts of the mass really being in that gospel music tradition.
My love of Mary Lou Williams actually started because of Father Peter O'Brien, who was a Jesuit priest and Mary Lou Williams’ manager for the last 20-something years of her life. I met him at this church in Harlem that I played at years ago, St. Joseph of the Holy Family on 125th and Morningside Avenue. I had met Father O'Brien briefly while I was at Juilliard. There was a Mary Lou Williams concert being presented, but I wasn't playing in it. He was overseeing the repertoire that was to be played and everything. So I met him briefly then and he remembered me when he saw me at St. Joseph’s, probably three or four years later.
Was that the first time that you had been exposed to “Zodiac Suite” by Mary Lou Williams?
No, even up to that point, I wasn't as familiar with “Zodiac Suite.” He had mentioned and talked about it, but I became more familiar with her sacred works like “Mary Lou's Mass” or “Mass for Peace” and some really beautiful choral works like “The Devil” or “St. Martin de Porres.” It wasn't until a bit later that I started to dig a bit into “Zodiac Suite.” Honestly, one of the reasons is because of Chris Pattishall, a wonderful pianist. He was digging into it for his own arrangement for his own ensemble. It was one of those pieces that I kind of missed for whatever reason. I had heard it, but it didn't really speak to me immediately. I'm not quite sure why I never got around to it sooner. Father O'Brien passed in 2015, unfortunately.
Maybe two and a half years ago, during the pandemic, I was going through some material and I discovered this version of “Zodiac Suite” that was premiered at The Town Hall. It was for a chamber ensemble with her band. There wasn't an easily accessible recording. I had to get it on CD. It wasn't on Spotify or all the digital platforms. I got the recording of this premiere, that was released in the early ‘90s. There were some really great moments, like when Ben Webster played “Cancer,” but I could tell that the ensemble wasn't very well rehearsed and there are a lot of issues with intonation and just overall balance and ensemble playing. I was more and more curious about this particular version of “Zodiac Suite.”
You have the nucleus of yourself and David Wong on bass and Aaron Kimmel on drums. You and David go back to some of your early live recordings and some other dates that you've done over the years. Nicole Glover is one of the special guests, specifically on the performance of “Cancer.” The thing that I really like about that performance is that it almost has a film noir attitude.
This music was definitely of its time. It's timeless, but also of its time in terms of the writing style. She was good friends with a man named Milton Orent, who was a staff arranger at NBC in the mid-40s. So the writing and the orchestration sounds very cinematic at times. Certainly “Cancer” is one of those particular movements. But each movement was written for different musicians who were friends or for some who weren't even musicians.
When you first discovered the suite, there were some mistakes that you had to correct, weren't there?
First of all, with the original manuscripts, there were even copying errors. As I understand it, she did this fairly quickly. Barney Josephson of the Cafe Society was the one who had encouraged her and maybe even put up the money to do this concert at The Town Hall, so I think she did not have a ton of time. Maybe she was doing all the copying herself, so there were errors ultimately that creeped into the parts.
How do you correct that? How do you find solutions for that?
For example, it could be a situation where the flute is playing a B flat and then you look to see if there's a doubling somewhere and so I think that's a B flat because the violas are also playing a B flat and also the trumpet. You sort of make a deduction based on all the information that's available. But there were some sections where I had to go back and I had to listen to the original recording on Asch records that she did with her trio and figure out what's written in this arrangement. Is that what she intended? Or is it maybe closer to what was the original writing? So there was a lot of guesswork, and trial and error. I can't even say to this, up to this point, that it’s a hundred percent full proof. There are still issues with articulations. I have to give credit to the Knights Orchestra and Eric Jacobson for being such a great collaborative partner in this.
How did you come in touch with the Knights? How did that come together
Before the pandemic, we were slated to have some performing opportunities. I think we were just trying to figure out what we were going to play. Then I brought up “Zodiac Suite” and they were keen on taking it on. With the pandemic, unfortunately that wasn't really possible. The first ensemble that fortunately took it on and did it on their streaming platform was the New York Philharmonic, but we only did four movements of that.
It was difficult, especially then because with social distancing and everything, people were spaced apart. You had the winds that were spaced and each of them were spaced at least six feet apart. There were a lot of hurdles to overcome there. But, with the Knights, everyone was committed and invested in figuring out how to make this piece sound as great as it could sound. Over the course of nine months or so, maybe even longer than that, as things were opening up, we had the opportunity to perform at least excerpts of the suite and then ultimately record it in the beginning of May 2022.
As you moved through this suite, what did you learn about your own pianism?
What was I think a great lesson that I tried to implement in playing this piece was the idea that this is not a piano concerto. It's not really a piano-centric suite and at least not this iteration of it. Now, it's different for the original recording because she was covering everything.
For me, it was how can I blend in seamlessly with the ensemble, with the rhythm section and then the orchestra and also have moments where I can show a bit of what I want to say and communicate musically, that's appropriate and hopefully tasteful. In “Virgo,” for example, I have a piano solo. I thought that that particular movement is a great example of Mary Lou's roots in the Kansas City swing tradition. And I thought, “Well, why not put a piano solo in there?” After all it is jazz and it's the only movement that really swings. Everything else has a very quasi-classical sort of approach and aesthetic to it.
At this time, she was really into Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Hindemith. That's one of the reasons why she composed “Zodiac Suite.” She wanted to explore other sounds that she was hearing. She was a very revolutionary sort of composer. She did not want to be typecast or fit into some kind of mold as a prodigy woman pianist. She knew she was a great musician, but she didn't want to be seen as a great musician who's a woman or a great musician for being a woman. She simply wanted to be accepted as the best, no matter what gender or race, for that matter.
It's not a reinvention because many times your allegiance is to the original arrangements of these pieces of music that Mary Lou came up with, although embellished with the classical musicians, the Knights. In one instance, I think it's the piece, “Pisces,” which by the way, she wrote in honor partly to Barney Josephson, who was also her employer because she appeared at Cafe society. He actually gave her the night off so she could go do that Town Hall gig. The soprano voice of Michaela Bennett is quite prominent on that piece.
Michaela is a wonderful vocalist. I met her some years ago and she's worked with so many different types of folks—Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams, and major orchestras like the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra. But her heart really is, I believe, in musical theater. She really loves the American Songbook. In fact, she had a lovely recital that I was fortunate enough to participate in, I believe in May. It was wonderful because she had all of these influences, but at the center of it really was the American Songbook tradition. She was the first person I thought of when the opportunity came up to do this project. The original singer on The Town Hall premiere was a woman named Hope Foy.
For somebody that's unfamiliar with Mary Lou Williams as they put this recording on and they listen to it, what should they listen for in the creative abilities and the music of Mary Lou Williams?
I think it's important to experience the suite in one sitting. If you're fortunate enough to have vinyl, it's great to sit down with a drink or beverage of some kind and just experience the entire movement. It's only 38 minutes at most. I think the contrasts of each movement that are there really play into the greater whole and benefit the greater whole. It's a journey.
It's definitely a journey. And I agree with you. You should take it all in, in one sitting. And then you come back for another sitting and subsequent listens after that. But it's meant to be enjoyed and explored as a whole, I think.
It's really kind of hard to pinpoint Williams’ direct influences, aesthetically sometimes, and that's, I think, what's so beautiful about it. She was very inspired by the “Black, Brown and Beige” in 1943. That was sort of the impetus to write “Zodiac Suite.” In fact, after this arrangement that she did, there was one more that I don't know exists. Like the scores and the parts probably were lost, but she did it at Carnegie Hall in 1946 with the Carnegie Pops Orchestra. This was a large vision that she had for composing quote unquote Third Stream music before that term was even coined about a decade later,
Sometimes it's really hard, even for me after being with this piece for so long, to pinpoint what were her direct influences here or there. It's just Mary Lou Williams and hearing something as early as “Nightlife” from I think 1930 of her, that was a great representation of stride piano playing when she was very young, maybe 20 years old or something like that. Then you listen to like the late 70s, when she did that Carnegie Hall concert with Cecil Taylor, which is out of this world. And then everything in between, you know, the earlier stuff with Andy Kirk and “Zodiac Suite” and the sacred works
And 1978 Carnegie Hall, when Benny Goodman brought her out on stage for the 40th celebration of his 1938 Carnegie Hall concert of “Sing, Sing, Sing.”
She wrote a number of arrangements for Goodman. She really ran the gamut in terms of her compositional style and method and approach. It’s really just great to get a little piece of that and put the puzzle together of who she was and what she represented and what she stood for. This project did take a lot of energy, but it really is satisfying seeing that people are getting some enjoyment out of the music and they're finding something valuable and listening to the music. That gives me great satisfaction and joy. That's the reason why I do this.
It’s great that people are getting introduced to Mary Lou Williams for those who hadn't heard of her before, and to understand her significance because even amongst the jazz cognoscenti or whatever, there are some people who really don't give her the credit that she deserves because she was someone who was very important.
