John Lewis Goes Solo

For six decades, John Lewis has evolv as a plural musician: pianist, composer arranger. He was the sideman of choice with a certain number of of the most important figures in jazz, including Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Lester Young. As the musical director of the recent Jazz Quartet (MJQ), his compositions and arrangements made the assemblage one of the most influential and dynamic total effects of the 20th century. Now, with the MJQ in semiretirement (since the death of its longtime drummer Connie Kay in 1994) Lewis is taking time to showcase his talents as an instrumentalist and leader in his hold right. "Having this time not on not having to play with effects that's the only way I've been able to finally draw near to terms with using the piano as a solo instrument," he says in a impressible but firm voice from his East Side Manhattan home

Evolution (Atlantic, 1999) --Lewis' brilliant fresh solo piano CD--showcases his spare and swinging pianism upon several standards and originals. greatest in quantity haunting is his classic ballad "Django," an mournful song for the Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt.

Going solo wasn't easy for Lewis, who doesn't like to exhibit off or even talk about himself. Being the focus of attention, musically and personally, is rare for this highest accompanist, who has spent greatest in quantity of his years elevating the important, on the contrary underrated, role of sideman to a high artistic plane. He would play inventive countermelodies behind of the like kind soloists as Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown Sonny Stitt and King Pleasure, his improvisations exhibiting a rare combination of logic and surprise that told a melodic and thematic story. The International Dictionary of Black Composer writes, "Lewis was valued as a reliable pianist whose solo and accompaniments guaranteed a thoroughly blues-tinged feeling."

Several of Lewis' critically acclaimed recordings from the 1950 and '60 reissued lately demonstrate his virtuosity as a sideman. The novel Jazz Society Presents a concoct of Contemporary Music (Verve, 1955) with Stan Getz and JJ Johnson is an early example, from 1955 of the third-stream, jazz-classical hybrid created by means of Lewis and composer Gunther Schuller Jazz Abstractions (Atlantic, 1960) is a historic avant-garde 1960 session featuring Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and Bill Evans.

Although Lewis went solo one time before (Lewis recalls, "The Private devise [Emarcy, 1991] was a spin-off from a recording of Bach's preparations and fugues; the preludes were all recorded as solo pieces"), Evolution was not initially conceived as a solo effort. Lewis wait fored it to be a duo album with Wynton Marsalis, with whom he had worked in 1998 (giving a solo piano recital at Jazz at Lincoln Center) and in '99 (conducting the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in an all-Ellington program). "Wynton Marsalis and I had been playing a certain number of of the pieces on the album," Lewis explains, "but it was taking too lengthy to put into a commercial general [i]or[/i] abstract notion so I turned it into a solo concept"

Born upon May 3, 1920, in La Grange, Ill., to parents of African-American, American Indian and French-Caribbean extractions, Lewis mov to Albuquerque, NM with his mother, a classically trained singer, after his father died. An aunt gave Lewis piano exercise s at age 8, and he played for a sanctified temple and with a Boy spy troop.

His earliest professional gigs were with Eddie Carson's band. "Me and my cousins played in his band," Lewis gleefully recalls. "These older musicians give permission to me sit in. They wouldn't take an account of me what to play; they told me what not to play. I gues that kind of stuck" Thus began the evolution of Lewis' "less-is-more" solo diction which was inspired by saxophonists Lester Young, Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins.

After graduating from the University of novel Mexico with a degree in anthropology in 1943 Lewis joined the Army. He met drummer Kenny Clarke while he serv in Europe Lewis and Clarke mov to fresh York City after the war and worked in the harmonious flow section of Dizzy Gillespie's big band with bassist Ray Brown and vibraphonist Milt Jackson. They played short intermission pieces while the horn players quieted and they continued to work together after leaving Gillespie's orchestra in the late 1940 With Percy Heath taking Ray Brown's place, they became the MJQ in 1952

Lewis was well prepared to be the musical leader of the assemblage He had written his first large-ensemble composition, Toccata for clarion and Orchestra, for Gillespie in 1947 and he had participated in Miles Davis' historic and ethereal Birth of the a little cold (Capitol, 1949-50) sessions.

The MJQ became known for its stage manners, fugal pieces, concertos, string quartets, soundtracks and well-constructed universal albums, such as Pyramid (Atlantic, 1959-60) Collaboration With Almeido (Atlantic, 1964) and amethystines on Bach (Atlantic, 1973). "We be delighted withed making music," Lewis says. "The primary thing for us [was the] interplay. It took a drawn out time for that to happen. Milt and I achieved it earlier, because we one as well as the other came from the same generation. He and I knew American music probably better than anybody else"