I am Associate Professor of Music in African American Studies and a pianist and composer. I am also courtesy professor in Art and Music Histories. My music research has explored how African American jazz improvisers express political and racial identity through creative practices that manifest in radical cultural work which connects with contemporary U.S. social movements like Black Lives Matter; Black Geographies; Artistic Research; music analysis; Black feminism frameworks; black self-determination and intellectual practices in improvised and popular musics. My articles have appeared in various peer-reviewed journals including Ethnomusicology Review, Jazz and Culture, Jazz Research Journal, Journal of African American Studies, Liquid Blackness, and Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture.

My first book is called Crossing Bar Lines: The Politics and Practices of Black Musical Space (University Press of Mississippi, 2021).

As an artist I have had interdisciplinary collaborations with artists who work in different modes and mediums. I have recently worked with artists Crystal Z. Campbell, Fred Moten, Cauleen Smith, and Suné Woods in performances and installations. I have also performed with Anthony Davis, Mark Dresser, Joseph Jarman, Greg Osby, George E. Lewis, Charli Persip, Gregory Porter, among many other musicians.

Ph.D. Integrative Studies in Music, University of California, San Diego

M.A. Music, New York University

B.Mus. New England Conservatory of Music

AAS 112/ANT 112 Introduction to African American Studies

AAS 206 Introduction to African American Music

AAS 400 African American Popular Culture

AAS 411 The Music and Life of Prince

AAS 511 Black Intellectual Thought in Music

AAS 409 & 609 African American Jazz and Social Life

Model Citizen, Here I Stand. Multidisciplinary Performance Exhibition with Crystal Z. Campbell Living Arts, Tulsa, Oklahoma, December 7th, 2018-January 18th, 2019

You are mine. I see now, I’m a have to let you go. Suné Woods, Fred Moten & James Gordon Williams. UCLA Hammer Museum, August 23, 2018.

You are mine. I see now, I’m a have to let you go. Suné Woods, Fred Moten & James Gordon Williams. Light Work, September 13, 2017.

Outlaw Culture Music. Syracuse University, Community Folk Art Center, November 19, 2015.

Solo piano improvisation for World Premiere of Cauleen Smith’s Crow Requiem & Speculations: Science Fiction, Chronopolitics, & Social Change. Everson Museum, April 7, 2015.