John Aaron Lewis (May 3, 1920 – March 29, 2001) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
jazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
pianistA pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers....
and
composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
best known as the musical director of the
Modern Jazz QuartetThe Modern Jazz Quartet was established in 1952 by Milt Jackson , John Lewis , Percy Heath , and Kenny Clarke . Connie Kay replaced Clarke in 1955...
.
Early life
Born in LaGrange, Illinois and raised in
Albuquerque, New MexicoAlbuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 521,999 as of July 1, 2008, according to U.S. census estimates, and ranks as...
, he learned classical music and piano from his mother starting at the age of seven. He continued his musical training at the
University of New MexicoThe University of New Mexico is a public university in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Founded in 1889, it offers bachelor's, master's, doctoral, and professional degree programs in the arts, sciences, and engineering...
and also studied anthropology. He served in the Army in
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. While stationed in France on a three-year tour of duty, he met and performed with
Kenny ClarkeKenny Clarke was a jazz drummer and an early innovator of the bebop style of drumming...
. Clarke was an early developer of the
bopBOP or bop may refer to:* bop, a smack, strike, or punch*bop, a style to dance solo to Rockabilly or Blues music, Common since to 50s till today* bop, shortened form of Bebop, an early modern jazz developed in the 1940s...
style and Lewis composed and arranged for a band he and Clarke organized. Lewis returned from service in 1945 and resumed his university studies.
Jazz career
In the fall however, he went to New York where he found work in
52nd Street52nd Street is a long one-way street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan.-Jazz center:The blocks of 52nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue were renowned in the mid 20th century for the abundance of jazz clubs and lively street life...
clubs with
Allen EagerAllen Eager was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.Eager first played jazz as a teenager during World War II in the bands of Bobby Sherwood, Sonny Dunham, Shorty Sherock, Hal McIntyre, Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey, and Johnny Bothwell...
, Hot Lips Page and others. After that year, he joined
Dizzy GillespieJohn Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, singer, and composer.Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...
's bop-style big band where Clarke was the drummer. Lewis developed his skill further by composing and arranging for the band as well as attending the
Manhattan School of MusicThe Manhattan School of Music is one of the world's leading music conservatories located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...
. In January 1948, the band made a concert tour of Europe, interrupting Lewis' studies. Lewis stayed in Europe for a time after the tour, writing and studying piano. He returned to the United States and started working for
Charlie ParkerCharles Parker, Jr. was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.Parker, with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, is often considered one of the most influential of jazz musicians...
in 1948 (playing on the famous recording "Parker's Mood"),
Illinois JacquetJean-Baptiste Illinois Jacquet was a jazz tenor saxophonist most famous for his solo on "Flying Home", recognized as the first R&B sax solo...
from October 1948 to 1949,
Lester YoungLester Willis Young nicknamed "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. He was also known to play the trumpet, violin, and drums....
from 1950 to 1951, and others. He participated in the second
Birth of the CoolBirth of the Cool is an album which compiles twelve songs recorded by the Miles Davis nonet for Capitol Records in 1949 and 1950. Featuring unusual instrumentation and several notable musicians, the music consisted of innovative arrangements strongly inspired by classical music, and marked a major...
session with
Miles DavisMiles Davis III was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer.Widely considered one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music including cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz...
in 1949 but was unable to attend the first because of an engagement with
Ella FitzgeraldElla Jane Fitzgerald , also known as "Lady Ella", and the "First Lady of Song", was an American jazz vocalist....
, whom he accompanied.
Al HaigAlan Warren Haig was an American jazz pianist, best known as one of the pioneers of bebop.Haig was born in Newark, New Jersey...
substituted for him, and the band did not include a pianist for its third session in 1950. Lewis arranged the compositions "Move" and "Budo" (immediately released as singles in 1949) and contributed one tune, "Rouge", to these seminal sessions.
Lewis, vibraphonist
Milt JacksonMilton Jackson was an American jazz vibraphonist, often considered the finest player on his instrument the art had ever known, and one of the most important figures in the bebop style, although he performed in several subgenres of jazz, especially his coolly swinging solos and accompaniments in...
, drummer Clarke, and bassist
Ray BrownRaymond Matthews Brown was an American jazz double bassist.-Biography:Ray Brown was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and had piano lessons from the age of eight. After noticing how many pianists attended his high school, he thought of taking up the trombone, but was unable to afford one...
had been the small group within the Gillespie big band (something that harked back to the peak of the big band era, when most big bands also featured small groups within) and played their own short sets when the brass and reeds needed a break. It led to the foursome forming a full-time working group in 1950, known at first as the Milt Jackson Quartet, and usually featuring the vibraphonist's distinctive, swinging, blues-heavy improvisations.
The group replaced Brown (who departed to join wife
Ella FitzgeraldElla Jane Fitzgerald , also known as "Lady Ella", and the "First Lady of Song", was an American jazz vocalist....
's group) with
Percy HeathPercy Heath, , was a jazz musician, famous for position as double bass player for the Modern Jazz Quartet....
and changed their name to the Modern Jazz Quartet. Lewis gradually transformed the group away from being strictly a vehicle for Jackson's improvisations, assuming the role of musical director, and oriented it toward a quiet, chamber style of music that found a balance between his gentle, almost mannered compositions, and Jackson's more elemental writing and playing. He obtained his master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music in 1953 and soon made the MJQ his full-time career. From 1954 through 1974, he wrote and performed for the quartet, with the group earning a worldwide reputation for managing to make jazz mannered without cutting the swing out of the music, before Jackson decided he wanted to leave and return to his purely blues and swinging roots.
Lewis also directed the School of Jazz at the Music Inn in
Lenox, MassachusettsLenox is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. Set in Western Massachusetts, it is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 5,077 at the 2000 census. It is the site of Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra...
, annually in August from 1957 to 1960. From 1958 to 1982 he also served as music director of the annual
Monterey Jazz FestivalThe Monterey Jazz Festival is one of the longest consecutively running jazz festivals. It debuting on October 3, 1958 and was founded the by San Francisco jazz radio broadcaster Jimmy Lyons.-History:...
, and in 1962 he formed the cooperative big band
Orchestra U.S.A.The Orchestra U.S.A. was an American jazz ensemble active from 1962 to 1965.The orchestra was founded in 1962 by John Lewis, along with Gunther Schuller and Harold Farberman, as an experiment in Third Stream blending of classical music and jazz. The ensemble itself was large, and included a full...
, which performed and recorded
Third StreamThird stream is a term coined in 1957 by composer Gunther Schuller, within a lecture at Brandeis University, to describe a musical genre which is a synthesis of classical music and jazz...
(jazz/classical combined) compositions (1962–65). (The MJQ themselves had recorded an album,
Third Stream Music, that amplified Lewis's and others' hopes that there could be a new stream of music welding jazz to classical music.)
After the MJQ disbanded temporarily in 1974, Lewis taught at the
City College of New YorkThe City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
and at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
, while performing solo recitals and duo recitals with
Hank JonesHenry "Hank" Jones is an American jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Critics and musicians have described Jones as eloquent, lyrical, and impeccable....
and others and continued composing.
But in 1981, the Modern Jazz Quartet re-formed, though Lewis also played with his own sextet, the John Lewis Group and, in 1985, founded the American Jazz Orchestra with
Gary GiddinsGary Giddins jazz critic, author, director, is best known for his longtime work with The Village Voice. Born in Brooklyn, and raised on Long Island, Giddins graduated from Grinnell College, Iowa, in 1970...
and Roberta Swann. (The MJQ's return album,
Three Windows, was dominated by chamber orchestra accompaniment, similar to tracks on the earlier
Third Stream Music, including a re-written "Three Windows," a quarter piece he'd written for the MJQ's music for the film
No Sun in Venice.)
In the 1990s he continued to teach, compose, and perform, both with the MJQ and independently. He participated in the
Re-birth of the Cool sessions with
Gerry MulliganGerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulligan was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger.Though Mulligan is primarily known as one of the leading baritone saxophonists in jazz history - playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz - he was also a notable...
in 1992 (and was this time able to play on the entire album). He was also involved in various Third Stream music projects with
Gunther SchullerGunther Schuller is an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, and jazz musician.- Biography and works :...
and others, as well as being an early and somewhat surprising advocate of the music of
Ornette ColemanOrnette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
.
John Lewis died in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
after a long battle with
prostate cancerProstate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly the bones and lymph nodes. Prostate cancer may cause pain, difficulty in urinating, problems...
.
Piano style
Lewis was among the most conservative of bop pianists. His improvised melodies, played with a delicate touch, were usually simple and quiet; the accompaniments were correspondingly light, with Lewis’s left hand often just grazing the keys to produce a barely audible sound. His method of accompanying soloists was similarly understated: rather than
compingComping is a term used in jazz music to describe the chords, rhythms, and countermelodies that keyboard players or guitar players use to support a jazz musician's improvised solo or melody lines....
—punctuating the melody with irregularly placed chords—he often played simple counter-melodies in octaves which combined with the solo and bass parts to form a polyphonic texture. Occasionally, Lewis played in a manner resembling the stride styles of
James P. JohnsonJames Price Johnson [also known as Jimmy Johnson] was an American pianist and composer. With Luckey Roberts, Johnson was one of the originators of the stride style of jazz piano playing.-Biography:...
and
Fats WallerFats Waller born Thomas Wright Waller was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer and comedic entertainer...
, all the while retaining his light touch.
Many of Lewis’s solos had a degree of
motivicIn music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition...
unity, which is rare in jazz. For example, in "Bluesology" (1956) each chorus of his solo builds on the previous one by establishing a link from the end of one chorus to the beginning of the next. His 64-bar solo in "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" (1957) derives almost entirely from its first two bars, which in turn derive from the first four notes of the theme. As the solo progresses Lewis subjects its opening motif to
inversionIn music theory, the word inversion has several meanings. There are inverted chords, inverted melodies, inverted intervals, and inverted voices...
(bar 9),
chromatic alterationIn music alteration, an example of chromaticism, is the use of a neighboring pitch in the chromatic scale in place of its diatonic neighbor such as in an altered chord. This should not be confused with borrowing , in which pitches or chords from the parallel key are used in place of those of the...
(bars 47 and 57), and a variety of other alterations in pitch and shape (bars 25-6, 41), which nevertheless retain their links with the basic figure.
Lewis was similarly conservative as a composer, for his music drew heavily on harmonic and melodic practices found in 18th-century European compositions. From the 1950s he wrote a number of
Third StreamThird stream is a term coined in 1957 by composer Gunther Schuller, within a lecture at Brandeis University, to describe a musical genre which is a synthesis of classical music and jazz...
works combining European compositional techniques and jazz improvisation. Most of these were written for the MJQ or for the quartet with instrumental ensembles of various sizes and published by MJQ Music. Among his best pieces for the MJQ are "Django" (an homage to gypsy guitarist
Django ReinhardtJean "Django" Reinhardt was a Belgian Gypsy jazz guitarist.One of the first prominent European jazz musicians, Reinhardt remains one of the most renowned jazz guitarists due to his innovative and distinctive playing...
, first recorded in 1954, the year after Reinhardt's death), the ballet suite
The Comedy (1962), and especially the four pieces "Vendome" (1952), "Concorde" (1955), "Versailles" (1956), and "Three Windows" (1957), all of which combine
fugalIn music, a fugue is a type of contrapuntal composition or technique of composition for a fixed number of parts, normally referred to as "voices". In the Middle Ages, the term was widely used to denote any works in canonic style; by the Renaissance, it had come to denote specifically imitative works...
imitation and non-imitative polyphonic jazz in highly effective ways. Other notable compositions that have become standards include "Milano" (1954), "Afternoon in Paris" (1956), and "Skating in Central Park" (1959, from the film score he wrote for
Odds Against TomorrowOdds Against Tomorrow is a 1959 film noir produced and directed by Robert Wise for HarBel Productions, a company founded by the film's star, Harry Belafonte. Belafonte selected Abraham Polonsky to write the script, which is based on a novel by William P. McGivern. As a blacklisted writer Polonsky...
).
Recordings
As leader:
- Improvised Meditations and Excursions
Improvised Meditations and Exercises is a jazz recording by John Lewis as a solo artist, released in 1959.This work represents Lewis away from his Modern Jazz Quartet mates...
(1959, Atlantic 1313)
- Odds Against Tomorrow
Odds Against Tomorrow is a 1959 film noir produced and directed by Robert Wise for HarBel Productions, a company founded by the film's star, Harry Belafonte. Belafonte selected Abraham Polonsky to write the script, which is based on a novel by William P. McGivern. As a blacklisted writer Polonsky...
(1959, UA 5061)
- The Golden Striker (1960, Atlantic 1334)
- Preludes and Fugues from the Well-tempered Clavier Book 1 (1984, Philips)
- The Bridge Game (1984, Philips)
As sideman with Charlie Parker:
- The Genius of Charlie Parker (1945–8, Savoy 12009)
- "Parker’s Mood" (1948)
- Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.Parker, with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, is often considered one of the most influential of jazz musicians...
(1951–3, Clef 287)
- "Blues for Alice" (1951)
As leader of Orchestra U.S.A. (with Gunther Schuller and
Harold FarbermanHarold Farberman is an American conductor, composer, and percussionist.-Biography:Farberman studied percussion at Juilliard and composition at the New England Conservatory and at Tanglewood with Aaron Copland...
):
- Orchestra U.S.A.
The Orchestra U.S.A. was an American jazz ensemble active from 1962 to 1965.The orchestra was founded in 1962 by John Lewis, along with Gunther Schuller and Harold Farberman, as an experiment in Third Stream blending of classical music and jazz. The ensemble itself was large, and included a full...
(1963, Colpix 448), including "Three Little Feelings"
- P.O.V.
POV is a PBS television series which features independent nonfiction films. POV is a cinema term for "point of view"....
(1975, Columbia PC33534), including "Mirjana of my Heart and Soul"
Recordings with the
Modern Jazz QuartetThe Modern Jazz Quartet was established in 1952 by Milt Jackson , John Lewis , Percy Heath , and Kenny Clarke . Connie Kay replaced Clarke in 1955...
:
- Vendome
Vendôme is a commune in the Centre region of France.-Administration:Vendôme is the capital of the arrondissement of Vendôme in the Loir-et-Cher department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. It has a tribunal of first instance.-Geography:...
(1952, Prestige 851)
- Modern Jazz Quartet, ii (1954–5, Prestige 170) incl. "Django" (1954)
- Concorde
The Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde aircraft was a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, a supersonic transport . It was a product of an Anglo-French government treaty, combining the manufacturing efforts of Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation...
(1955, Prestige 7005)
- Fontessa
Fontessa is a 1956 album by the Modern Jazz Quartet released on Atlantic Records. It was the first of their albums released on Atlantic.-Track listing:#"Versailles" - 3:22#"Angel Eyes" - 3:48...
(1956, Atlantic 1231) included "Versailles"
- One Never Knows (1957, Atlantic 1284), including "Three Windows"
- Third Stream Music (1957, 1959–60, Atlantic. 1345) including "Sketch for Double String Quartet" (1959)
- Exposure
Exposure may refer to:* Publicity, an activity designed to rouse public interest* Outing, exposure of someone's secret sexual orientation* In climbing, the state of openness with relation to the distance of a fall -Biology:...
(1960)
- European Concert (1960, Atlantic 1385–6), including. "Vendome"
- The Modern Jazz Quartet and Orchestra (1960, Atlantic 1359), including "England’s Carol"
- Original Sin
Original sin is, according to a doctrine proposed in Christian theology, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt,...
(1961, Atlantic 1370)
- The Comedy (1962, Atlantic 1390)
- A Quartet is a Quartet is a Quartet (1963, Atlantic 1420), including "Concorde"; "In Memoriam" (1973, Little David 3001)
- Under the Jasmin Tree (1968, Apple SAPCOR4)
- The Last Concert
The Last Concert was the Modern Jazz Quartet's last recording before disbanding in 1974, only to re-unite about seven years later. It featured John Lewis , Milt Jackson , Percy Heath and Connie Kay...
(1974, Atlantic), including "Blues in A Minor," "Confirmation," "'Round Midnight."
External links