Jazz musician Chris Ryan Williams explores the summits and depths of sonic possibility

Chris Ryan Williams explores the psychogeography of caves on Odu: Vibration II Credit: courtesy image

“The States right now are in a terrible place and I don’t take that lightly. But I think it’s also important to get the opportunity to have different perspectives and music come through.”

Jazz composer and musician Chris Ryan Williams is in the surreal spot of making gorgeous and contemplative music as the world crumbles into turmoil and dystopia. But he’s using his work and his platform to build community and connections.

“I’m really fortunate to live in New York City, where there is a pretty strong community of creative and expansive musicians and artists. So it comes really naturally to just try and bring people together as much as possible. I’ve realized that even though the music and our community can be really beautiful, it’s also really a bubble,” ponders Williams. “And it’s important to, if not pop the bubble, at least step out and into different bubbles.”

Inspired by avant-garde vocalist Charmaine Lee’s beyond-ambitious 50 states tour last year, where she played one gig in each state, Williams begins 2026 with a long weekend of gigs in Florida. He’ll be playing solo shows in Miami, Gainesville and Orlando.

This will not be Williams’ first time playing music in Central Florida, however; he spent time at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2019 studying with flutist and then-resident artist Nicole Mitchell. Williams even played as part of Mitchell’s ensemble at Timucua Arts — where he’ll now be headlining this week.

“We connected very deeply there, and after that, I started playing with her ensemble really regularly,” says Williams of Mitchell. “She’s still a mentor, and working towards more colleague, peer. It all stemmed from the Atlantic Center.”

Williams also fondly recalls holing up in the Center’s library, flipping through the same books that had been read by the legendary likes of composer John Cage. He even found inspiration from the weather. “The swampy humidity that I felt just holds on to so much,” he says. “It feels like things don’t just pass through easily.”

Williams’ own music and composition practice is deeply influenced by concepts of place and space — be it the humidity of Central Florida or caves in Puerto Rico — as evidenced by his latest album Odu: Vibration II from late last year. The album is a stunning and reflective collection of improvised pieces that were partially influenced by not only those actual caves but also Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Or the psychogeography of caves, at the very least.

“The initial plans for that were to take Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, go and explore caves myself and then make an album; it just didn’t happen in that order. So I ended up having to look into the future a bit and really sit with what I think I’m going to experience, what I hope to experience, what I might experience and create from there,” says Williams. “It was really interesting to make this music from this imagined state, and then a few months later, I was able to go to Puerto Rico and go inside of these caves.”

The six-track, 40-minute album — Williams’ first as a bandleader after many collaborative projects and ensembles — features saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi and trombonist Kalia Vandever and was mostly recorded live at New York’s Roulette Intermedium, though with synthesizers, field recordings and sundry ghosts in the machine added after. Odu is a gorgeous, calming and ethereal soundscape with the players so utterly in sync, it’s hard to tell where one instrument ends or another begins. There is a lot of improvisation happening between the players, but there’s a strong narrative hand at work here too.

Chris Ryan Williams live Credit: Philippe Gerlach

“We did the whole thing live almost exactly how it is on the record, but there’s a bit of movie magic happening too. With ‘Moon’ and ‘Waning,’ those were actually one piece at the beginning. If you bring ‘Waning’ to the front, you pretty much get exactly what we did,” says Williams of the live element.

“Afterwards, I took that into my home studio, and started to edit a little bit, really trying to preserve the spirit of what is like a seamless performance — we performed it without any breaks. The fun of it came through trying to find out where the track is, where it begins and where it ends; what is the character of this piece that brings it to a place where it’s strong enough to essentially stand on its own.”

The Orlando show, dubbed “an electro-acoustic summit” and also featuring UCF instructor and percussionist Thad Anderson, will see Williams trying out both new ideas and revisiting pieces, themes and ideas from Odu.

“I have a composition that I’ve been working on, I have a journey that I go on and that I hope the audience goes on with me. It starts in a pretty immersive, somewhat aggressive place that hopefully draws you in, and then I work my way through a couple of emotional states that eventually land on a version of the first track on my record called ‘Moon.’ So I do sort of a solo version of that,” reveals Williams. “I think people can expect to hear some recognizable things and lots of unrecognizable things.”

Williams, like so many of us, cops to feeling overwhelmed and often disillusioned, but thinks back to a recent performance — on the same day that U.S. forces kidnapped Venezuelan leader Maduro — as part of a traditional tea ceremony at a boathouse in Prospect Park that pointed to how music still could be a positive, centering force that cuts through the disorienting avalanche of Trumpian bullshit.

“Everybody was freezing cold. There’s still snow on the ground, but so many people came. We weren’t promoting anything, just sharing live sound and tea, with ikebana artists both from the States and from Japan,” he remembers.

“And just doing this community thing in a very organic, natural way gave me a bit of respite and a bit of a place in which to process what’s happening and what had just happened that morning. And I do hope that is what happens when people come to experience my music.”

7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 27, Timucua Arts Foundation, 2000 S. Summerlin Ave., timucua.com, $30

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Jazz musician Chris Ryan Williams explores the summits and depths of sonic possibility

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