Between The Keys — A Tribute to Mary Lou Williams

“Did you ever hear a tune you wanted to play but couldn’t? An elusive note — concealed in a chord, hidden in a rhythm, buried between two keys. Wouldn’t you want to know who planted it there? And what might have grown out of it by now?”

Between the Keys is a collection of music and stories inspired by the life of the great Mary Lou Williams, one of the most important figures in the whole history of jazz. Ten original compositions for piano — five solos and five duets for four hands — are paired with ten short stories about Williams, the sound she built, the people she inspired and the music she spent her last years giving away.

Born in 1910 and playing for money by the age of six, Williams lived through and shaped every era of jazz. She learned to play from paper piano rolls and built her skills touring with vaudeville companies. Musicians and music lovers admired and respected her in her own time, and her hit tunes, arrangements, compositions and playing style always moved with the times.

Through playing the pieces and reading the stories, music lovers will discover how this music travelled — in the luggage of vaudeville companies, punched into rolls of paper, whispered from one person to the next — and why the people holding everything up are so often the ones left out of the story. You already owe something to Mary Lou Williams, even if you do not yet realise it.

This book is suitable for pianists of Grades 1–5 standard. The duets allow a student to play with a teacher or a more advanced partner from the very first piece, alongside the walking bass and boogie figures Williams grew up playing, and to explore the blue notes that hide in the cracks between the keys.

Between the Keys features magnificent cover art by Kareen Cox.