Deanna Witkowski shares ‘sacred jazz’ with students during SU residency

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On a trip to Pittsburgh 10 years ago, musician Deanna Witkowski visited the cemetery where her idol, Mary Lou Williams, was buried. Years later, Witkowski moved to Pittsburgh and now passes that same cemetery on the way to her school.

“(Williams) always identified herself as being an experimenter,” Williams said. “That’s something that I really love about her music.”

Witkowski specializes in sacred jazz, focusing on the music of Williams, an American jazz pianist, and is currently a PhD student in Williams’ hometown at the University of Pittsburgh. She is currently doing a residency at Syracuse University and performed with the Morton Schiff Jazz Ensemble, the Orange Juice Quintet and the Hendricks Chapel Choir this past weekend.

The Hendricks Chapel Choir sings sacred music in a variety of styles, from Palestrina to modern sacred jazz, which is intended for spiritual use and connects to religious themes by using the jazz idiom in a sacred context.

Williams used sacred jazz to bridge the gap between sacred and secular music, which challenged the Catholic church of the time, said Professor Theresa Chen. As a Black female jazz pianist, composer and arranger in the 1940s and 1950s, she changed the face of jazz music and became an icon, inspiring people for generations, Chen said.

On top of her own sacred jazz, Witkowski has also written books about Williams and released an album inspired by her work in January, entitled “Force of Nature.” She performed several pieces from this album on Sunday afternoon.

“Mary Lou always talked about the music of jazz bringing people together,” Witkowski said. “I really feel like this is literally an opportunity for my friends to come together to play jazz.”

Assistant Professor Anne Laver said that Witkowski’s music resonates with students because of her niche interest in sacred jazz and status as one of few experts in the U.S. on Williams. Students get the rare opportunity to learn from such a high profile performer both in class lectures and in performance, she said.

“The texts that Deanna has written or that she’s using from older, traditional hymnody, are sacred in nature,” Laver said. “Then she’s laying those over a jazz harmonic structure and a jazz style and idiom.”

Many of the weekly Hendricks Chapel Malmgren concert series guests are chosen based on how they will be able to integrate themselves on campus during their residency, Laver said. Chen recommended Witkowski.

“We try to coordinate with the Setnor faculty to make sure we’re bringing in guests that are going to be of interest to the students and that the faculty will help work into their own syllabi and performances,” Laver said.

Chen, who teaches jazz piano, jazz history and songwriting at SU and co-directs the Jazz Funk combo and Orange Juice combo, shares a passion for Williams. Chen and Witkowski have worked together in the past after meeting at a Jazz Education Network conference.

Much like Witkowski, Chen took inspiration from Williams in her album “Whispering to God.” On top of the performance on Friday, Witkowski also gave a lecture in Chen’s jazz history class.

“The program aims to conclude women’s history month, to recognize women composers and, and Jazz musicians, like Mary Lou Williams,” Chen said. “(Williams’) contributions in music overlapped Black History Month last month and women’s history month this month.”

As a jazz musician, Witkowski is an improviser. The creative aspect of jazz music is an important skill for musicians to learn, so Laver was excited that Witkowski was able to work with the SU choirs, as well as share her music with the larger student body through her Hendricks concert.

“As somebody who is creating sacred jazz, (she) connects really well to the chapel and, and the kind of music that we’d like to lift up at the Chapel… that has a sacred connection, or allows for a spiritual experience,” Laver said.

The chapel has hosted sacred jazz performers in the past because it’s a style that is consistent with the goals of the chapel. But this concert contrasts greatly with others the chapel has hosted this year, such as the Baroque group in February.

Witkowski became interested in Williams after being invited to perform at the Mary Williams Jazz Festival in Washington D.C. in 2000. She was fascinated by Williams’ experimental music and the fact that she wrote music after she had a religious conversion to Catholicism.

“Jazz is a spiritual music by its nature,” Witkowski said. “One thing I’ve tried to adopt in my music, whether or not I’m doing straight instrumental music, or sacred music in a church… is that music can really have the power to heal people.”

Witkowski’s trio is made up of a bassist, a drummer and herself. She has been working with her drummer, Scott Latzky, since the late 1990s, then began working with her bassist, Daniel Foose, in 2015.

The song that Witkowski ended her performance with on Sunday, “We Walk In Love”, was written for the Justice Choir Songbook, a catalog of music that started in Minneapolis in 2017 for use in social justice events and activism.

During “We Walk in Love”, audience members were given lyrics and asked to sing along to the music. SU student and Hendricks Chapel choir member Sammy Karp said they don’t usually get much audience participation, so Sunday was a nice change of pace.

“It’s great when we can get audiences to join us,” Karp said. “We love to sing, so we know how much fun singing can be.”

He said that as a choir member, he appreciates Witkowski’s skill as a composer and performer. She has found her niche in combining jazz and classical voice in a unique blend that many artists can’t accomplish, he said.

“The hope is that students may find something in there that is meaningful,” Laver said. “You always learn something by coming to a concert. Even if you don’t like it, you learn something.”