Flipping through the jazz section on a visit to his local record store a few years ago, artist Kye Potter found a battered tape by American pianist and composer Jessica Williams. It looked every bit the quintessential DIY release. “The labels had come off the tape,” he says. “It was home-dubbed, with photocopied notes, a little bit of highlighter to accentuate the artwork, and released on her own label, Ear Art.”
As a collector and occasional producer particularly interested in the American musical avant garde after John Cage, Potter was intrigued by a tape called Prepared Piano. Yet it seemed unusual from Williams, who was best known for making sparkling jazz in the straight-ahead tradition of Thelonious Monk and Errol Garner. If the west coast jazz circuit knew her as a musical experimenter – for her concerts, she requested pianos without the cover to make it easier to reach inside and strum the strings – it was a facet that rarely made it to her records.
