I’ve been waiting for this music a long time. A superbly rendered compilation of piano improvisations and instrumentals that penetrate and sustain the quiet places of the soul, disarmingly clean and unpretentious, each piece is a rich, textured, and evocative expression of mood, but it’s much more than that. For me it’s also the sweet affirmation of gifts and talent I first heard many years ago, a testament to perseverance, a manifestation of the elusive ghosts of creative process.

You see, composer and musician Ron Williams and I go way back. We grew up together; did dumb things; chased girls; made music and dreamed our dreams. And while the individual pieces in this wonderful collection have titles reflecting the Colorado magic in which Ron Williams has lived for many years, they just as easily for me evoke the warm, soft, fragrant, southern summer nights of our shared youth. A natural musician, adept at cello, bass, baritone horn, and guitar in his teens, Ron was playing piano improvisations then, understand, certainly not as fleshed out as these, (the man has achieved a BA in Music Theory and a Masters in Composition in the interim,) but beautiful, inviting, tantalizing all the same, and I have never forgotten. There’s Aspen, to be sure, but Magnolia, too; Jasmine and Cicadas. My simple admonition then, and every opportunity since, has been: play something; just play something. Between our infrequent meetings through the years there were only echoes.

You hear it. At times soothing, haunting, contemplative, and graceful, “Music from the Heart” is a kind of deliverance, a setting free, and yes, even an escape, if you will. You will be humming these melodies long after listening. But perhaps more than anything it is a promise kept. It is mine, but I am happy to share.

Samuel Harrison

Ormond-by-the-Sea, Florida

November, 2010