Deanna Witkowsi - Pianist and Composer

Tomorrow will mark three weeks since my arrival in Pittsburgh. I initially came here for an engagement with my New York City trio; I chose to stay here for two months because of Mary Lou Williams and the musicians who keep welcoming me to their city and their bandstands.

A community mural project along the east busway portrays Mary Lou Williams.

There is something about “place” that can only be experienced and then, to a lesser extent, written about. Place seeps into our bodies, minds, spirits; affects our breath, our gait, our sense of how much space is available for us to take up on the sidewalk, in the grocery store, in a jazz club. New York and Pittsburgh are two very different places. Mary lived in both of them and now I’m following her history in parallel by spending time in her hometown.

Mary’s niece Bobbie Ferguson, who currently lives in Pittsburgh, once told me that Mary would come back here to relax, to be with family. While she occasionally performed here- and, indeed, co-founded the first Pittsburgh Jazz Festival in 1964- she visited to be with and to care for her loved ones. Occasionally Mary would bring clothes that she couldn’t sell at her thrift shop, stuffing them into her Cadillac and trying to sell them in the ‘Burgh. Sometimes she left Pittsburgh with family in tow, absconding with her sister Grace and her six children, taking them back to Manhattan to live in her Harlem apartment when they were in need. Continue reading →