Steve Williams

Steve Williams is a bassist and composer based in New York whose work joins jazz performance with an anthropological approach to sound, drawing on ethnography to shape music built around rhythmic intricacy, texture, and humor. Raised in Dallas, Texas, he trained at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts before studying at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music with Harish Raghavan, Michael Formanek, and Ben Street. He paired a BFA in jazz performance with graduate study in anthropology at The New School for Social Research, and that interdisciplinary background informs his writing and improvising. Williams holds the bass chair in saxophonist Alfredo Colon's quintet alongside pianist Jonathan Paik, and he has performed across New York and Dallas at venues including The Jazz Gallery, The Bar Next Door, and ShapeShifter Lab, as well as the Bern International Jazz Festival in 2017.