Name: Chris Ryan Williams
Nationality: American
Occupation: Composer, improviser, trumpet player, educator, interdisciplinary artist
Current release: Chris Ryan Williams's new album Odu: Vibration II, featuring Patrick Shiroishi and Kalia Vandever, is out via AKP.

[Read our Patrick Shiroishi interview]
[Read our Patrick Shiroishi interview about collaboration]

If you enjoyed this Chris Ryan Williams interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit him on Instagram, and bandcamp. 



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

A leading impulse to create for me is habit.

I don’t necessarily fall squarely into either camp of ‘do it everyday’ or ‘wait until the inspiration hits’ but I would say my thought process is usually some version of: let me show up to the studio/practice session and put in 15-20 mins and see if I really want to do this today. To which oftentimes the answer happens to be yes, luckily and thankfully.

I think I also intuitively do this a bit because I'd like to have the opportunity to remind myself that I really do love this and if I put more of my energy towards it, I’ll only love it more.

After that habit impulse I would say some things/people that inspire me often are (in no order): Shapes, wind, musicians in New York, film, and science fiction. The imaginative impulse feels at the root of all the things on this list in one way or another.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

This Odu: Vibration series that I’m working with deals directly with a sculptural element in relation to a sonic element and the interaction between those is the work.

I love to imagine and visualize works to their completion and oftentimes like to get very particular about ‘pre-composing’ which leads me to be too literal and didactic.

To cut against that urge I will simply assemble many sonic elements and musicians and improvise / record / improvise and rinse and repeat until I get something closer to the feeling of what I’m actually interested in rather than the thing itself. I find that it’s more interesting, surprising, and of course generative working in this fashion.

I love researching and reading and painting new worlds so a lot of my composition is a mix of context, given verbally or through text, and distinct timbral textures

Tell me a bit about the way the new material developed and gradually took its final form, please.

The album Odu: Vibration II is a part of a larger project I’m developing involving some readings around The Allegory of the Cave and some of Marimba Ani’s writings.

As I spent more time with these texts I realized that I’d never been inside of a cave and that maybe that’d be a good place to go from in the making process.

There were some steps taken towards going and exploring caves but at the point of composing I wasn’t able to make the trip so I leaned more into what my imagination could provide as a journey to follow down a cave.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

I like to have control of a lot of the aspects of the ‘final’ work … but it gets murky from the beginning to the end, mainly because I like to collaborate and work with improvisation.

So the control is often in world building or setting certain parameters to hopefully end with a really strong, unique set of materials that I then submit to LOTS of time editing, arranging, rewriting to get to what will eventually be the final work.

How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

I tend to create medium to longer form works that really benefit from the context of the album or ‘piece’.

Odu: Vibration II was originally conceived as a 40-60 minute composition for a performance at Roulette Intermedium. This was the recording session as well as the live premiere of the piece but the album version is edited and sculpted into something that I consider to be somewhat separate.

I learned from listening back to the recording session that there were some things I wanted to adjust about the pacing that would change the experience for the listener of a record vs being in a live performance setting.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? In terms of what they contribute to a song, what is the balance between the composition and the arrangement (performance)?

I wasn’t exposed to much of the production side of music until my mid-20s and wasn’t actually excited about it until maybe 4-5 years ago when I started working in DAW’s and programs like MaxMSP during the COVID-19 shutdown.

Since then all of that has become a huge part of my practice and interest in sound in general and really changed my whole approach. I see all of the steps you mention as different areas dealing with composition, I try not to separate them out too much.

Music and the accompanying artwork are often closely related. Can you talk about this a little bit for your current project and the relationship that images and sounds have for you in general?

The artwork for Odu: Vibration II is truly incredible. Kristina Bajunaishvili is an incredible ikebana artist that I was fortunate enough to connect with around the time I was composing Odu: Vibration II and when I encountered her work I knew we would be collaborating on something in the future.

The care and beauty while still allowing for abstraction to take the fore is something that I strive for in my sound practice. She created multiple pieces in preparation for what eventually became the cover and all were created while listening to the album.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I like to take breaks, they’re really necessary for me. I usually rest for a few days if I can and then go back to my routine I mentioned above.

After releasing Odu: Vibration II I felt a huge relief as it was the last of 3 albums I released this year and I was tired!

I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about or the impact it had on them – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

In a way I’m still pretty taken aback by how well some of the critics that have reviewed Odu: Vibration II understood what I was offering.

The album is purposefully opaque and allows for a wide variety of interpretations. But the response I’ve received so far has been incredible to hear. I would lean towards new insights for sure!