Louisa Williamson, 2023 APRA Best Jazz Composition Award winner Photo: Supplied
It's ambient jazz, some call it 'wallpaper jazz', but it's brought its composer into the limelight in the New Zealand music scene.
Louisa Williamson's 'Dream Within a Dream' is the winner of the 2023 APRA Best Jazz Composition Award.
She'd only been composing three or four years when she put the track down in her debut album What Dreams May Come for an 18-piece jazz orchestra.
Williamson described the project as an experiment in which she took the forces of a big band – which usually plays "in your face" – and created a subtle and delicate soundscape, the opposite of what you'd expect from such large forces.
"It's supposed to be music which you choose how much attention you want to pay to."
RNZ Concert host Bryan Crump found himself wanting to listen to the work very closely. Speaking to Williamson on Three to Seven, he asked her how specific she'd been in scoring for the various players, who are usually expected to improvise on pretty simple melodic material.
Apart from the rhythm and keyboard sections, Williamson wrote down most of the music for the 18 players which is, she admits, a bit unusual for a jazz ensemble.
Was it almost classical?
"Yeah, I do sometimes say that it's a hybrid between ambient big-band jazz and classical music. I have been quite inspired by classical music and studied harmony and orchestration."
Claude Debussy ca 1908 Photo: Public domain
When asked which composers she likes, Williamson says she digs Debussy and J S Bach, but adds she often blanks out when asked about classical influences, as she always feels like a bit of an imposter in that world.
She's going to have to get over that. Her handling of a jazz orchestra is already masterful, and she had no trouble persuading her fellow jazz musicians to follow her score.
Originally from Taupo, Williamson possibly has her first teacher, Winsome Wensley, to thank for taking the career path she's chosen.
Wensley taught Williamson the clarinet and sax, and introduced her to her first jazz ensemble, the Great Lake Big Band, when she was in high school.
"She would send me down to Wellington for the youth jazz workshops that happen every year. That's where I fell in love with the music and made me want to move to Wellington to study jazz."
Williamson finished the music for her What Dreams May Come album at the beginning of the first Covid lockdown.
The title comes from the name of a 1990s movie by Vincent Ward, about love and life after death. The movie had a big impact on Williamson.
Her best friend encouraged her to apply for Creative New Zealand funding to record the music, which was done beautifully by the engineer and producer Mike Gibson.
Apart from the album release gig, she hasn't performed the material live since. Now it's won APRA recognition, when is Williamson going to get the band back together?
The plan had been to do that during last month's Wellington Jazz Festival, but the date for the What Dreams May Come reprise clashed with the concert by Cécile McLorin Salvant, and Williamson wasn't missing that.
"So amazing. A total master of the voice."
However, Williamson would still like to have another go at performing the album live.
"The hard thing is getting all the musicians in the same place."
Meanwhile, she's booked a recording date in January to record music she's written for a jazz quintet: compositions she's been playing for the past five or six years, with the plan of releasing the result as an album next year.
Live or recorded, we look forward to hearing what Louisa Williamson does next.
Louisa Williamson Photo: Supplied
