Last October, guitarist extraordinaire Yasmin Williams released her third album, Acadia, an uplifting collaborative affair. She recently headed to the NPR studios to record her first Tiny Desk Concert, and, like the album, on which she ‘pulls in guests on eight of the nine songs’, she was joined by seven other musicians for this special session.
Like the album, described by Glenn Kimpton as ‘open and full of life’, this session turned into an equally joyous celebration of collaboration, opening to Hummingbird, on which Allison de Groot joined her on clawhammer banjo and Tatiana Hargreaves on fiddle. It’s hard to believe that this was only their second time performing this together as a trio. Marcus Grant on marimba and Amadou Kouyate on djembe joined Yasmin for Sisters alongside a string section of Lelia-Michelle Walker and Morgan Brown on viola and Maggy Simon on violin.
Her technical ability as a player shone through on the complex Guitka, from her 2018 album ‘Unwind’, armed with guitar, kalimba (attached to her guitar) and tap shoes for subtle percussion–”it’s fun to do everything at the same time, so that’s what we’re gonna do”. Also from ‘Unwind’, she closed with Restless Heart.
