Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band will screen on March 30th at 7pm at the Portland Conservatory of Music.
One of the greatest jazz pianists, composers, and arrangers of all time, Mary Lou Williams was a walking history of jazz. A child prodigy who could play everything from classical to boogie woogie and swing, to bebop and beyond, Williams was an innovator who helped create the sound of 20th century America. As a black woman in jazz, she faced the ever persistent challenges of sexism and racism, but Mary Lou never allowed that to stop her. She wrote wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and was a mentor to such musicians as Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. After converting to Catholicism in the mid 1950s, Williams devoted her later years to caring for musicians in need and teaching younger generations about jazz’s rich African American heritage.
The New Yorker called her “ A Hidden Hero of Jazz”.
Find out why when WMPG’s Jazz At The Movies presents Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band, on Sat. March 30th, 7:00 PM, at The Portland Conservatory of Music, 28 Neal St.. It’s FREE, and it’s bound to swing.