Faculty Directory

Research Interests

Composition, Critical Improvisation Studies

Biography, Education and Training

Biography

James Gordon Williams (JGW) is a transdisciplinary composer, pianist, and cultural theorist. He recently collaborated with artist Moor Mother in a program he created entitled The Worldmaking Aura of Sonic Blackness. He has also collaborated with Crystal Z. Campbell, Maria Gaspar, Fred Moten, Cauleen Smith, Suné Woods. He has performed with drummer Terri Lyne Carrington in her Music for Abolition program, pianist/composer Anthony Davis, bassist Mark Dresser, Joseph Jarman, Charli Persips’ Supersound band, Gregory Porter, George E. Lewis, Mark Dresser, Greg Osby, Charenée Wade as well as other musical luminaries. He has performed at Birdland, El Museo del Barrio, the Institute of Arts and Sciences, Lenox Lounge, Knitting Factory, Symphony Space, Village Vanguard, UC Santa Cruz Music Center, and music festivals around in France, Italy, Malta. Upcoming performances include a third collaboration with artist Maria Gaspar at San Jose Museum of Art this upcoming 2024 June. He has written music for Syracuse Stage’s staging of playwright Kyle Bass’s salt/city/blues. He is the author of Crossing Bar Lines: The Politics and Practices of Black Musical Space (2021). His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in Ethnomusicology Review, Jazz & Culture, Jazz Research Journal, Journal of African American Studies, Liquid Blackness Journal of Aesthetics and Black Studies and Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture. His article “Principle of Alloys” will be published in Liquid Blackness Journal of Aesthetics and Black Studies this year. He recently recorded an album of his original music with the key members of Terri Lyne Carrington’s Social Science.   He is Assistant Professor of Composition, faculty member in the Visualizing Abolition certificate program, and affiliate faculty in the History of Consciousness program  at UC Santa Cruz. He  holds a Ph.D. in Integrative Studies from U.C. San Diego.

AWARDS

• 2024 Gugak International Workshop Fello, National Gugak Center

• 2024 Falling to Rise Again Recording Project, Arts Reserch Institute, UC Santa Cruz

• 2023 The Worldmaking Aura of Sonic Blackness (with Moor Mother, Arts Reserch Institute, UC Santa Cruz

• 2018  Syracuse University Humanities Center Faculty Fellowship

• 2015 College of Arts & Sciences Co-Curricular Grant, Syracuse University

• 2013 Music Department Dissertation Year Grant, UC San Diego

• 2013 UC San Diego Music Department Travel Grant (Malmö, Sweden)

• 2012 UC San Diego Lower Jazz Society Award

• 2011 Yale Bouchet Conference-Best Oral Presentation

• 2010 Columbia University Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute

• 2008 UC San Diego Lower Jazz Society Award

• 2006 Independent Music Awards

• 1993 Music Scholarship, New England Conservatory of Music

• 1993 Music Scholarship, Shambrey Chorale

• 1993 Outstanding Musicianship, International Association of Jazz Educators

• 1992 Outstanding Musicianship Award, El Camino College

• 1991 Outstanding Musicianship Award, El Camino College

• 2015 College of Arts & Sciences Co-Curricular Grant, Syracuse University

Selected Publications

Publications

Books

• Crossing Bar Lines: The Politics and Practices of Black Musical Space. University Press of Mississippi (2021)

Journal Articles

• Williams, James Gordon. "The Principle of Alloys: Transforming Carceral Debris Into a Soundscape of Abolition." Liquid Blackness, Vol. 8, No. 2, (2024): 156-171

• Williams, James Gordon. “Black Birdanity.” Jazz and Culture, Vol. 4, No. 2, (2021): 85–104

• Williams, James Gordon. “Randy Weston’s Pan African Politics of Music Education.” Jazz and Culture, Vol. 4, No. 1, (2021): 33-67

• Williams, James Gordon. "Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s Critique of the Danziger Bridge Shootings." Jazz Research Journal, Volume 13, Numbers 1-2, (2019): 70-92

• Williams, James Gordon. "Black Muse 4 U: Liminality, Self-Determination, and Racial Uplift in the Music of Prince." Journal of African American Studies 21, no. 3 (2017): 296-319

• Williams, James Gordon. "Crossing Cinematic and Sonic Bar Lines: T-Pain's 'Can't Believe It'." Ethnomusicology Review 19, (2014)

• Williams, James Gordon. “Improvising on Feedback Piano: Aesthetic Discourses Behind Technology and Sound” in Rethinking Improvisation: Artistic Explorations & Conceptual Writing, edited by Henrik A. Frisk & Stefan Östersjö, 169-177. Lund University, Sweden, (2013)

• Williams, James Gordon. “African American Influences on American Music” in Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture, edited by Jacqueline Edmondson, 17-23, Greenwood Press, (2013).

Selected Presentations

Public Lectures and Presentations

•  2024 Ethnomusicology Beyond the Human Symposium, Panelist, invited by Juliana Graper, Indiana University, April 26-27, 2024.

• Force of Things: In Conversation with artist Maria Gaspar and Live Performance by James Gordon Williams, invited by artist Maria Gaspar, Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección Exhibition, Museo del Barrio, June 21, 2023

• Afrofuturism: Centering the African-Diasporic Imagination, Milestones of Black Speculative Thought, Invited by Nicole M. Mitchell, Université Paris 8, February 9, 2023

• Hit2Hit: Battle of Celebrated Rwandan Music Producers Trackslayer and Dr. Nganji, a Documentary Screening and Discussion, Invited by Victoria Netanus Grubbs, Black Studies Collaboratory, UC Berkeley, February 22, 2023, 1:30-2:30 pm (via Zoom)

• “Mubuntusic,” International colloquium: Afrofuturism: Centering the African-Diasporic Imagination, University of Paris 8, France, February 8-10, 2023.

• “Randy Weston’s Pan African Politics of Musical Education,” Society for American Music conference, Tacoma Washington, March 17-21, 2021.

• “Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s Critique of the Danziger Bridge Shootings” presented at the International Society for Improvised Music (ISIM) Augsburg University, Minneapolis, MN, May 16, 2019. 

• “Breathing as Improvisational Strategy and Social Commentary in Experimental Music” presented at Humanities Center Faculty Fellows Dinner Presentations at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, February 1, 2018.

• “Black Muse 4 U: Liminality, Self-Determination, and Racial Uplift in the Music of Prince” presented at the Purple Reign: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Life and Legacy of Prince at the University of Salford, Manchester, England, May 26, 2017.

•  “Crossing Bar Lines: Improvising the Subject Through Unconventional Musical Practices” presented at Breathturns: Improvisation and Freedom Conference at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, June 26, 2016.

•  “Strange Fruitvale: Improvised Music as Protest Against Police Brutality” presented at Black Arts Initiative Conference at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL, June 4-6, 2015.

•  “Sun Ra’s Epistemologies,” at Guelph Jazz Colloquium at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. September 3-5, 2014.

• “Crossing the Bar Lines: Locating 20th and 21st Strategies of Musical Equipoise and Resistance” presented at African American Music in World Culture: Art as Refuge and Strength in the Struggle for Freedom at Boston University, Boston MA, March 22, 2014.

•  “My Name Is Oscar: Improvisation and Social Death” presented at Yale University in New Haven, CT. April 2013.

• “Improvising On Feedback Piano” presented at Yale Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education at Yale University in New Haven, CT, April 2012.

• “Improvising On Feedback Piano: Aesthetic Discourses Behind Technology and Sound” presented at the Rethinking Improvisation Conference in Malmö, Sweden, November 29, 2011).

• “T-Pain Effect: The Politics of Representation in Autotune” presented at the Pop Conference in Seattle, WA, April 17, 2010.

• “T-Pain Effect: The Politics of Representation in Autotune” presented at the Guelph Jazz Colloquium in Ontario, Canada. September 8-10, 2010.

• “Critiquing the Stereotype of Wes Montgomery as a Natural Musician” presented at the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, CA, May 11, 2010.

Selected Exhibitions

Multidisciplinary Artistic Practice as Research  

• Model Citizen, Here I Stand. Multidisciplinary Performance Exhibition with Crystal Z. Campbell Living Arts, Tulsa, Oklahoma, December 7th, 2018-January 18th, 2019

• You are mine. I see now, I’m a have to let you go. Suné Woods, Fred Moten & James Gordon Williams. UCLA Hammer Museum, 2018

• You are mine. I see now, I’m a have to let you go. Suné Woods, Fred Moten & James Gordon Williams. Light Work, 2018

• Outlaw Culture Music. Syracuse University Community Folk Art Center, 2015

• Solo Piano Improvisation for World Premiere of Cauleen Smith’s Crow Requiem. Everson Museum, 2015

Selected Recordings

 Unrepeatable Life, James Gordon Williams, JGWMUSIC 2005 

 Intrinsic Evolution, Charli Persip and Supersound, 2008

Selected Performances

Artistic Research, Performances and Installations

• Spatial Illusions as Radical Mindscapes: A Conversation about the Work of Richard Mayhew, Keyboard Performance Based on Richard Mayhew Exhibit, Santa Cruz MAH, May 5, 2024

• Make Music Day: Maria Gaspar with James Gordon Williams, and Guillermo Galindo, "Principle of Alloys" Performance of Gaspar's Bars, San Jose Museum of Art, June 21, 2024

• "The Worldmaking Aura of Sonic Blackness" Collaborative Performance with Moor Mother and James Gordon Williams, Music Center UC Santa Cruz, March 6, 2024

• "The Healing". Solo Piano Concert. Music Center, UC Santa Cruz, November 1, 2023

• Compositions. Collaboration with Maria Gaspar. Improvisation on Sculptures from Cook County Jail, Institute of the Arts and Sciences, UC Santa Cruz, October 7th, 2023

• Terri Lyne Carrington’s Presents Music for Abolition. Keyboard Improvisation on Nicholas Payton’s composition “Freedom Is No Fear,” Institute of the Arts and Sciences, UC Santa Cruz, June 8, 2023 (Other artists in the program included Sarah Elizabeth Charles, Camila Cortina Bello, Morgan Guerin, Nicole Mitchell, Elena Pinderhughes, Dianne Reeves, Matthew Stevens and Carl “Kokayi” Walker)

• Falling to Rise Again, Solo Piano Performance, April in Santa Cruz Festival of New Music, San Francisco, CA, the Lab, April 30, 2023

• Model Citizen, Here I Stand. Multidisciplinary Performance Exhibition with Crystal Z. Campbell, Living Arts, Tulsa, Oklahoma, December 7th, 2018-January 18th, 2019

• You are mine. I see now, I’m a have to let you go. Suné Woods, Fred Moten & James Gordon Williams. UCLA Hammer Museum, August 23, 2018

• Piano performance in Studio Venezia by French Artist Xavier Veilhan who presented his work at the 57th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, French Pavilion, 2017

• You are mine. I see now, I’m a have to let you go. Suné Woods, Fred Moten & James Gordon Williams. Light Work, September 13, 2017

• Outlaw Culture Music. Syracuse University, Community Folk Art Center, November 19, 2015

• Solo piano improvisation for the world premiere of Cauleen Smith’s Crow Requiem & Speculations: Science Fiction, Chronopolitics, & Social Change. Everson Museum, April 7, 2015

• Solo Feedback Piano Performance, Malmö Conservatory of Music, Sweden, 2011

• Solo Feedback Piano Performance, UC San Diego Conrad Prebys Music Center, 2011

• Gregory Porter, Idyllwild Jazz Festival, 2010

• Exceptional Musicians-Essential Music 10th Anniversary, Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, CA, 2010 

• Anthony Davis and James Gordon Williams in a Duo Piano recital, Mandeville Recital Hall, UC San Diego, 2008

• Charli Persip Trio, The Jazz Museum of Harlem, 2008

• Masterclass & Concerto, Sull, Improvvisazione Jazz, PN Bar & Café, in Pordenone, Italy, September 18, 2008 

• Solo piano concert, The Istituto di Musica Della Pedemontana, Aviano, Italy, 2008

• James Gordon Williams and Mark Dresser Duo, La Jolla Library, 2008

• Intrinsic Evolution (2008) with Charli Persip, 2007 

• Charli Persip Quintet, Jazz Mobile, 2007

• James Gordon Williams Quartet, Lenox Lounge, 

• James Gordon Williams Quartet, The Stone, 2007

• James Gordon Williams, John Birks Gillespie Auditorium, New York City, 2006

• Charli Persip Trio, Smoke Jazz Club,2006

• James Gordon Williams Quartet, Smalls Jazz Club, 2006 

• Miles Griffith Quartet, Jazz Standard, 2006

• Charli Persip Supersound, Minton's Playhouse, 2006 

• Charli Persip Supersound, Birdland Jazz Club, 2005 

• Greg Osby 5, Village Vanguard, 2005

• Greg Osby 5, Green Mill Jazz Club, Chicago, 2005

• James Gordon Williams Trio, Knitting Factory, New York City, 2005

• Joseph Jarman Ensemble, Vision Festival, New York City, 2005

• Charli Persip Supersound Band, New Jersey Jazz Festival, 2005

• Greg Osby 5, Atina Jazz Festival, Italy, 2005

• Greg Osby 5, Jazz à La Seyne, France, 2005

• Greg Osby 5, Langnau Nights, Switzerland, 2005 

• Greg Osby 5, Malta Jazz Festival, 2004

• Charli Persip Supersound Band, Ellington Jazz Festival, 2004

• James Gordon Williams Trio, Celebration of Tom Otterness, Symphony Space, 2003

• Unrepeatable Life, JGWMUSIC Records, 2003

• Joseph Jarman Ensemble, "Dignified Dissonances In The History of Dirt!," Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, The Community Church of New York, 2003

• James Gordon Williams Duo, Birdland Jazz Club, 1997 - 1998

Teaching Interests

Composition