Joe Williams (b. 1993)
About the Composer
Joe Williams (b. 1993) is a sound liberator from Tacoma, WA. His chilling arrangement of the spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” was recorded by GRAMMY® Award winning baritone Kenneth Overton and celebrated pianist Dr. Elizabeth Hill for their album The Living Spiritual (Navona Records, 2025). Recent compositions include He mai kuhewa for oboe and piano, Affirmations for countertenor, mezzo soprano, flute, viola, harp and double bass and a solo piano piece entitled past harvest for left hand alone.
About the Piece
The form of Grief and Praise follows its title. First, a ritual gently unfolds between a griever and a companion (perhaps dear friends of many years) who eventually settle on the East African folk song, “A ba boleki nwana!” (They Will Not Lend Me a Child!), reimagined by Williams as a chorale. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912) was the first composer to introduce this song to the piano repertoire via Twenty-Four Negro Melodies, Op. 59, a virtuosic masterpiece Kim Davenport recorded in 2022. After a couple timely knocks on the soundboard, a celebratory dance ensues — a reminder to willingly let in joy.
The symbiotic relationship between grief and praise, which “live in the same house,” is explored extensively by Martín Prechtel in The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise (2015). Composed especially for the Myriad Voices project, Williams’ Grief and Praise (2026) is indebted to this philosophy, African pianism championed for decades throughout the United States and internationally by scholar Dr. William Chapman Nyaho and all the blues Williams’ ancestors sang in their attempts to survive whole.
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Sheet Music
Purchase the sheet music from the publisher: hard copy | pdf
