Davey Williams has been known for several decades as one of the finest painters of seashells alive, using pleasing colors and a small brush with great intuitive skill. Thursday before last, he abandoned this activity briefly to take up improvising music on guitar. This pursuit, while less satisfying to an audience than watching laborious hand-tinting of seashells, may nevertheless be helpful in alleviating dismal reports from television news, and hopefully more “informative” as well. At the least, any attempts at profiteering will be brief and tasteful, while reasoned editorial content promises to be virtually non-existent, which it usually is on network tv anyway. Guitarist Davey Williams has performed at most of the leading venues for and festivals of new composed and improvised music in North America and Europe (well over 1500 concerts since 1974); has appeared on over 40 published recordings, many under own name. He has performed in groups such as Curlew; in The Knitting Factory line-ups; in a long-standing partnership with LaDonna Smith; as a solo performer; and, as “Cyd Cherise”, in Ron ‘Pate’s Debonairs with the legendary Reverend Fred Lane. Williams has collaborated extensively with a wide variety of artists, including Min Tanaka, the Shaking Ray Levis, Gunter Christmann, Anne LeBaron, John Zorn, Eugene Chadbourne, Kramer, Roger Turner, Marcus Eichenberger/Philip Micol, Billy Jenkins, and Gustavo Matamoros. He was the Co-Founder/editor of The Improvisor journal of free improvisation, and served on advisory panel to National Endowment for the Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts.

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