The Adam Lee-Morgan Jazz Orchestra

This is the orchestra's Spring 2026 West Coast Tour.

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.

Williams' harmonic and rhythmic ideas, while chronologically rooted

deep in the swing era, were the foundation on which much of the

bebop movement was built. Despite this, her own name and work is

underrepresented in the Jazz Canon.

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Host or Publisher The Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center