# Mars Williams adds a welcome twist to the yuletide season with Mars Williams Presents An Ayler Xmas: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2017/12/01/mars-williams-adds-a-welcome-twist-to-the-yuletide-season-with-mars-williams-presents-an-ayler-xmas-video/
- Published: 2017-12-01T22:15:49+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Jazz and Christmas have gone together like egg and nog for decades, and for some
musicians the engagement goes far beyond throwing a seasonal tune into the set list
in December. Dave Brubeck, Diana Krall, Tony Bennett and Ramsey Lewis have all delivered
an album’s worth of seasonal favorites, and how many people learned first about 
swing through Vince Guaraldi’s music for _A Charlie Brown Christmas_?**

This year, saxophonist Mars Williams adds a welcome twist to the yuletide season
with _Mars Williams Presents An Ayler Xmas_, a spirited, unique tribute to the saxophonist
Albert Ayler (1936–’70).

The album, which Williams self-released, was recorded last year at the Hungry Brain
in Chicago by the saxophonist and his long-standing Ayler repertory band, Witches&
Devils. Each track is a medley that combines seasonal favorites like “Jingle Bells,”“
Angels We Have Heard On High” and the Hanukkah song “Ma’oz Tzur” with Ayler chestnuts,
such as “Spirits” and “Truth Is Marching In.”

The band’s performance style—which favors high-energy horn solos, spacy keyboard
flourishes and rhythms that shift between march time, swing time and no time—nods
toward the sound that Ayler projected with the ensembles he toured with during the
last five years of his career.

Born in Elmhurst, Illinois, in 1955 and based in Chicago since 1990, Williams’ work
as a leader and collaborator covers a vast stylistic range. He has played full-bore
free jazz with Hal Russell, Peter Brötzmann, and Ken Vandermark; and he’s mixed 
jazz with r&b and rock in Liquid Soul and X_Mars_X.

He currently holds down a weekly gig with free improvisers Extraordinary Popular
Delusions, and he’s a member of the rock group Psychedelic Furs.

Williams has shared the stage with trained dogs, dancers and acrobats in Soul Sonic
Circus: There’s a photo on his website of him doing some high-flying wire work, 
suspended high above the crowd.

Ayler’s music had a formative influence upon Williams, who learned about it first-
hand from one of Ayler’s close collaborators, trumpeter Don Cherry, during workshops
at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York.

During a phone interview from his home, Williams explained, “I really liked the 
spiritual approach of [Ayler’s] music and his melodies, how he would go from this
melodic structure and beautiful, gospel-type tonalities, into just screaming and
reaching out to some higher force. That resonated with me; it became a very big 
influence in the direction that I started going with my music when I transitioned
from clarinet to playing saxophone.”

But Williams didn’t notice the similarities between Ayler’s folk-rooted melodies
and Christmas music until years later: “I was playing some Ayler stuff, just practicing
and playing solo, and as I was playing it I started morphing into playing a Christmas
tune. I was like, ‘This has the same kind of tonality as some of Ayler’s music.’
And then I was listening to another tune of Ayler’s and I was writing it out, transcribing.
I believe it was “Heavenly Home.” As I was transcribing it, he goes into this solo
and I was like, ‘Wow, that one little thing he did there was like “Merry Gentlemen.”’

Williams decided to meld the two seemingly disparate elements together in a program
he arranged in 2008 for Witches & Devils. Since then, the band’s annual shows have
become a Chicago tradition. After Williams began playing winter gigs in New Orleans,
he tried it out with musicians he knew in the Crescent City.

He found that his approach to the material—which combines charted themes with freely
improvised passages that can be redirected by anyone on the bandstand—was highly
portable.

“So I thought, ‘I’ve been collaborating with musicians in different cities in Europe,
Scandinavia and the United States. There are all these musicians that I like to 
play with and some that I’d like to play with but never have. I wonder how this 
would work if I took the same idea that I brought to New Orleans and Chicago, and
took it to different cities.’ So that’s what I’m doing this year. I’ve chosen musicians
who are also familiar with Ayler’s music because that’s the common thread to all
of this.”

The list of artists linked by that thread includes talented players such as Nels
Cline, Jeff Albert, Didi Kern and Niels Van Heertum.

Williams will tour the States and Europe during December, playing with a different
line-up in each city. The tour kicks off on Dec. 1 at Gateway City Arts in Holyoke,
Massachusetts, with a top-notch ensemble: Mars Williams (saxophone, toys), Joe McPhee(
trumpet, saxophone), Jeb Bishop (trombone), Nate McBride (bass), Joe Morris (guitar)
and Chris Corsano (drums).

The tour concludes on Dec. 23 at Bimhuis in Amsterdam, where Williams will perform
with another amazing ensemble: Wolter Wierbos (trombone), Eric Boeren (cornet), 
Wilbert De Joode (bass), Jasper Stadhouders (guitar) and Frank Rosaly (drums).

![Image result for Mars Williams](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/52fa8b2ee4b0e8aa92dbd4f1/
t/53909845e4b03b32bad62fce/1401985094794/)

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