Unalome – Buster Williams

At 80, Buster Williams finds in Unalome a way to look ahead without leaving behind all that he has lived. The American bassist, whose career has brought him into the company of some of jazz’s most influential figures, draws on a Buddhist symbol representing the path toward enlightenment. His music seems to acknowledge that such a journey is never a straight line. Encounters, detours, silences, and discoveries shape it and keep changing us along the way.

The opening piece, “Stairways,” carries something of that philosophy. Jean Baylor’s wordless vocals intertwine with Bruce Williams’ saxophone and Stefon Harris’ vibraphone, while George Colligan’s piano finds room between the phrases and Lenny White’s drums engage the bass in an extraordinarily natural rhythmic conversation. No one seems in a hurry to conclude. The music moves forward through the attention each musician gives to the others.

On “Tayamisha,” dedicated to his daughter, Williams revisits a composition whose vitality has endured through the years. Yet it is on “The Wisdom of Silence” that his musical thinking takes on a particularly intimate dimension. The bass traces lines that seem to pause and listen to their own resonance, surrounded by suspended harmonies and improvisation that finds meaning in what remains unspoken. The sextet’s interpretation of “Estate,” by Bruno Martino, reveals another side of that sensitivity: a familiar melody that takes on a renewed sense of intimacy in their hands.

Unalome closes with “Here's to Life,” a song that, after everything we have heard, becomes difficult to separate from Buster Williams’ own story. His bass has accompanied countless musical lives, but here we hear something more personal: a man who continues to find reasons to create, share, and learn. Perhaps enlightenment is not a destination we eventually reach, but the willingness to keep listening.