Dave Brubeck, Gunther Schuller & John Lewis watching
Paul Desmond, Joe Benjamin and Joe Morello at the "Farmhouse"
John Lewis School of Jazz/Lenox, MA (a 1959 Cecilia snapshot)
Lewis, John Aaron
May 3, 1920
Dave Brubeck, Gunther Schuller & John Lewis watching
Paul Desmond, Joe Benjamin and Joe Morello at the "Farmhouse"
John Lewis School of Jazz/Lenox, MA (a 1959 Cecilia snapshot)
He was born in La Grange, IL and raised in
Albuquerque, NM. His father was an optometrist.his mother a studied
singing with Schumann-Heink's daughter. John studied piano from
1927 and majored in anthropology and music at the University of
New Mexico until 1942. His studies were interrupted by World War
II. He served in the US Army from 1942 to November 1945. While
in the Army he met drummer/jazz pioneer Kenny Clarke who helped
him start his jazz career. In New York he joined Dizzy Gillespie's
band as pianist/arranger while attending the Manhattan School
of Music. His first major work Toccata for Trumpet & Orchestra
was introduced by Dizzy at Carnegie Hall in 1947.
After a European tour with Diz he worked for
two months for Tony Proteau's band in Paris. Upon his return to
the US he joined the Illinois Jacquet band in 1948. He stayed
for 8 months. Later he played and recorded with Lester Young and
Charlie Parker. He was pianist/arranger for the Birth of the Cool
album on Capitol. The nine-piece ensemble was led by Miles Davis.
The album is considered a ground breaking event in jazz.
He continued at the Manhattan School of Music where he included some voice lessons in his curriculum. He sang with the Schola Contorum there. He was awarded two degrees from Manhattan and devoted some time to the teaching of piano and theory.
Although he toured Australia for a few months
in 1954 as accompanist for Ella Fitzgerald, in 1954 he was busy
as mentor and chief creative force in building he Modern Jazz
Quartet.
While the MJQ gained international recognition Lewis began to
take on outside ventures as a composer-arranger, orchestrating
his music for specially-organized concert groups in person and
on disc. Early in 1957 the Quartet made a series of successful
European appearances and recordings. The soundtrack for the French
film No Sun In Venice was released in 1957. And beginning
that same year he started a series of summer jazz schools in Lenox,
MA. The series lasted 4 summers. Many leading jazz musicians of
the time were recruited as teachers including Dizzy Gillespie,
Max Roach, Bill Evans as well as composer Gunther Schuller.
In the winter of 1957 the MJQ played 88 concerts in four months
in the UK and Europe. Lewis conducted the Stuttgart Symphony Orchestra
that year and recorded his European Windows (a series of his arrangements
on RCA) with them. In 1958 and '59 he served as Music Director
of the Monterey Jazz Festival.
He was able to avoid all nightclub work after
1959 and the MJQ played only concert halls such as Town Hall,
NYC and festivals.
John Lewis was highly respected as a self-sufficient
and self-confident musician. He had a clear idea as to what he
wanted from his fellows and achieved it with an unusual manner
of quite confidence and firmness coupled with modesty and a complete
indifference to critical reaction. When the director for Cecilia
This Week expressed enthusiasm for European Windows his reply
was, "That was just a record I made for RCA."
He had his detractors. Miles Davis thought the MJQ was like a boxer going into the ring with a tuxedo. Students at Lenox, after hearing his early recordings with Dizzy Gillespie. wondered why he wasn't playing with more "balls."
But as a pianist he was described by jazz critic
Whitney Balliett as "a unique and invariably moving jazz
pianist . . . his touch is sure and delicate, his ideas are disarmingly
simple and honest. He has a rhythmic sense and enough technique
to allow him easy freedom."
Lewis' early arrangements for Gillespie included Two Bass Hit,
Emanon, Stay On It and Minor Walk. For Miles Davis he wrote Move,
Budo, and Rouge. There are reissued recordings of his writing
on RCA, Rondolette and Blue Note. And Birth of the Cool is available
on CD with previously unissued charts
The Harry Belfonte film Odds Against Tomorrow
had a a big-band (22 pieces) recorded score written and directed
by John Lewis. It was released in October of 1959. Gunther Schuller
summarized the importance of this score, ". . . it utilizes
jazz as a purely dramatic music to underline a variety of situations
not specifically related to jazz... It can serve its purpose in
the film but it can also stand as absolute music apart from the
original dramatic situation."
The MJQ was integrated with the Beaux Arts
Quartet (formed by a student of the famous Beau Arts Trio) for
a concert at Town Hall/NYC in September 1959. The two groups then
recorded music heard in that concert in the Atlantic 1345 LP Third
Stream Music. The recording as compositions by Lewis, Jimmy Giuffre
and Gunther Schuller. That LP intoduced what Gunther Schuller
called Third Sream Music. In 1960 John Lewis won the Metronome
poll for arranging.
(Information gathered from the Encyclopedia of Jazz by
Leonard Feather. Da Capo 1960)
More to read (John
Lewis & the MJQ)
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz . Harmony Books, New York, 1978 p.137 Feather, L.
The New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz . Bonanza Books (Crown Publishers Inc.) New York, 1960, p.311. Feather, L.& Gitler, I.
The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Seventies . Horizon Press. NY, 1976, p .225 Harrison, M.
The Sait-on jamais Music. Jazz Monthly iv (1958) Aug, p.25
Looking back at the Modern Jazz Quartet. The Art of Jazz, ed. M. Williams (New York, 1959), p.219 Hennessey M.
The Story of Kenny Clarke, Klook (1990) Hentoff N.
John Lewis . Down Beat (20 Feb 1957), p.15
John Lewis : A List of Compositions Licensed by B.M.I. (New York,1961)
The Jazz Life (New York, 1961) p.170 James M.
10 Modern Jazzmen (London, 1960), p.65 Lalo, Thierry
John Lewis (Biography in French). Les Éditions Parenthèses, Marseille France, 1991 Lowe, Jacques
Jazz Photographs of the Masters (Artisan, 1995-ISBN 1-885183-25-9) Includes brief sketches of the MJQ members as to their place in the group and in jazz generally. Morgan A. & Horricks R.
Modern Jazz. Greenwood Press. Westport Connecticut, 1977 Owens T.
Fugal Pieces of the Modern Jazz Quartet , Journal of Jazz Studies. iv (1976) aut. , p.25
John Lewis , The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (1988) Postif F.
John Lewis a Coeur Ouvert . Jazz Hot 36 (Apr.1969), p.16Sadie S.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Vol 10 , p.707 Williams M.
The Jazz Tradition (New York, 1970). p.172. Yanow S. John Lewis , AMG All-Music Guide.