Support the Mary Lou Williams Project

Mary Lou Williams was a Pittsburgh raised jazz pianist and composer who would go on to become one of the most influential jazz musicians of all time, writing music for Andy Kirk in Kansas City and later Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, as well as informally instructing jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. 

While Williams’ later work has received a lot of attention in recent years due to accessibility of sheet music and high quality recordings, her earlier work that she did for the big bands has been considerably harder to get ahold of, with just a handful of charts available.

The project is to recreate musical scores from her handwritten notes (working in conjunction with the rights holders, the Mary Lou Williams Foundation) and then produce both published packets for educators and also a series of concerts to promote the extraordinary work of Williams.

Money raised will pay for the time and expertise spent carefully transcribing modern readable sheet music from the archival notes and recordings, paying additional transcribers and music editors to double-check the accuracy of the work, and rehearsing and performing the work to create high-quality presentations of the music, and the editing of the charts into derivative works playable by school and community bands. There are still dozens of great Williams compositions out there waiting to be given close attention.