606 Club Special: 'Four Plus Three Plus One' Featuring Kate Williams Plus Special Guest John Williams

Award-winning pianist Kate Williams is a fine musician who has made a name for herself as both a performer, composer/arranger and music educator (teaching at both the Guildhall School of Music and Middlesex University). A previous winner of the John Dankworth Award she was featured in the Steinway 2-Piano Festival in 2010, 2011 and 2013, with two of the concerts broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Kate has recently released her seventh, and potentially most fascinating, CD "Four Plus Three", a collaboration between Kate and the Guastalla classical string quartet. The repertoire for this new project includes material by Bill Evans, Cole Porter and Antonio Carlos Jobim as well as originals by Kate herself. As Kate explains it "the arrangements exploit the varied sound palette of both string quartet and jazz trio, creating contrasts between the improvised and the notated, between sustained textures and strong grooves, seeking a fully integrated approach that is definitely not just a jazz trio with string accompaniment!". This will be the third time now that Kate has performed here with this particular line up, however tonight is a little different as, besides the trio and string quartet, Kate's Special Guest this evening will be one of the classical world’s greatest, and it's fair to say legendary, guitarists, the internationally acclaimed multi-Award-winning John Williams...who also just happens to be her Dad! Born in Australia in 1941, John is unquestionably a true virtuoso, guitar historian Graham Wade describing John as "perhaps the most technically accomplished guitarist the world has seen". He first started playing guitar at the age of 11, when the family moved back to the UK, initially taught by his father Len (also a talented classical guitarist), and then attending summer courses with the great Andrés Segovia at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy before going on to study guitar (and piano!) at the Royal College of Music. He started to attract notice after his first concert in 1958 when the now famous quote from Andres Segovia about him, that “God has laid a finger on his brow", was first printed. Since then John has had a stellar career of more than five decades of recording and performing, numerous awards, including a Grammy, a Brit and an Edison and regular appearances on TV and radio. Although perhaps best known as an outstanding classical guitarist, John has always had an interest in all musical genres, so between 1978 and 1984 he was a member of the fusion group Sky, created a highly acclaimed classical-rock fusion duet with celebrated rock guitarist Pete Townshend and these days is as likely to be seen performing with UK jazz and fusion legend John Etheridge as he is to be seen performing the classical guitar canon. He has appeared regularly over the years at Ronnie Scott’s, and had a long lasting musical relationship with John Dankworth and Cleo Laine. So not such a surprise that Kate turned out to be such a wonderful jazz pianist (and composer). He has also had success in the popular music field, being probably best known for his performance of Stanley Myers "Cavatina" which became a worldwide hit single when it was used as the theme tune to the Oscar-winning film “The Deer Hunter”. Amazingly, Kate tells me that this is the first time that she has ever appeared in a public performance with her father and to celebrate the occasion has written a number of pieces specifically for John and this line up, all of which will be premiered this evening. Both Kate and John are long time supporters of the 606 Club, so it is with enormous pleasure that we welcome the Williams family to the Club for this unique occasion. Booking strongly advised.

“Kate Williams...a worthy addition to the ranks of British Jazz composer pianists…” The Observer; “Kate Williams…a superbly lucid and inventive pianist and composer” BBC Radio 2; “John Williams has been a five-star artist...since I heard h