Written music, 1929-2015

Series 1 contains written music prepared for or collected by the Foundation generally for the purpose of facilitating public performance of Williams’s music. This includes edited parts and scores that use both recorded music and written music found in the Mary Lou Williams Collection and other collections, but mostly includes transcriptions of commercial and archival recordings for which no known extant written music had survived. This fills a gap in the Mary Lou Williams Collection around Williams’s work with Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy, and her scores for Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Dizzy Gillespie, and other notable Williams music. These transcriptions comprise the significant portion of Series 1.1.
Series 1.2 mainly consists of Williams’s music interpreted by other artists, including Geri Allen, Carmen Lundy, and Cecilia Smith, as well as scholar Michael C. Heller. There are also scores from other composers, including Henry Threadgill. Series 1.3 includes commercially released sheet music, most of which is related to Williams. Series 1.4 encompasses various special projects, including photocopies of Williams’s arrangements made for the Duke Ellington Orchestra held at the Smithsonian Institute, and O’Brien’s collections of small group and other scores created by Williams.
Series 1.5 collects transcriptions related to the Zodiac Suite. Most of these were prepared by Mark Lopeman using both reference recordings and archival parts and scores found in the Mary Lou Williams Collection. These were the first attempts made by the Foundation to recreate the chamber orchestra scores used in the historic 1945 Town Hall performance. Series 1.6 includes Williams parts and scores to Williams’s liturgical works and reflect an evolution in the way the Foundation treated Mary Lou’s Mass, shaping the way subsequent generations would experience her spiritual works. Material related to Zodiac Suite and Mary Lou’s Mass created by other artists are also found in series 1.3.