Join Healdsburg Jazz for an artist talk with Adam Lee-Morgan on the life and career of pianist Mary Lou Williams.
This talk will trace Williams’ journey from her childhood in Pittsburgh, to her move to Kansas City, where she wrote and eventually performed with Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, and on to New York City, where she mentored many of the rising jazz greats of the 1940s and ran humanitarian organizations for musicians.
Adam Lee-Morgan is a Ph.D. candidate in Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and holds a Master’s degree in Music Education from New York University. He is the band director at Chatham University and teaches wind instruments at the Afro-American Music Institute in Pittsburgh. Previously, he was a high school band director in Los Angeles and New York.
As a performer, he leads the Adam Lee-Morgan Jazz Orchestra, a big band, and Adam’s Aces, a smaller group. He was previously the founder and leader of the LA Swing Barons, a big band based in Los Angeles focused on the Kansas City style of big band jazz, and he also founded and led the Beijing Big Band in Beijing, China, the first of its kind in China since the 1930s. He is also an avid Lindy Hopper and is deeply involved in the swing dance community locally, nationally, and internationally.