Introduction

John Lewis, the soft-spoken, dignified music director of the Modern Jazz Quartet, is a highly cultivated, introspective player who attempted to forge a new synthesis of jazz and classical music in the late 50s and 60s. Both his music and his stage presentation dignified jazz in new ways. Musically, his carefully balanced arrangements, his use of counterpoint and the overall subtlety of his approach deepened and enriched jazz with devices from the classical tradition. Presentationally, the group appeared primarily in concerts rather than clubs, and performed in tuxedos using the formal stage decorum of classical musicians. The message was that this was music to be taken seriously. Lewis's piano style is a delicate one, almost minimalist, blending a quiet swing with great skill in motivic development. He is anchored by a lifelong commitment to the blues, which saturates and elevates his compositions, notably "Django," which we have included in this program.

Origins

John Aaron Lewis was born in La Grange, Illinois, outside Chicago, on May 3, 1920. His parents moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, later that year, to be with his mother's mother and grandmother, and that's where he grew up. His father was an interior decorator who played the fiddle and piano. He divorced Lewis's mother soon after he was born. Then his mother died when he was four. So Lewis was raised by his grandmother and great-grandmother in Albuquerque, a city with few African-Americans, and where the lower socio-economic strata were occupied by Hispanics and Native American. Lewis was brought up in a healthy, middle-class environment.

Lewis began studying piano at age six, having resisted the instrument at first. He took many years of piano lessons. His first band experience was at age 10, in the Boy Scouts. He was playing for a music merit badge, and they had a gig at a night club from 9 to 12 for a dollar apiece and all they could eat. By age 15 he was working regularly in dance halls and night clubs. He heard Jay McShann at that time stopping in Albuquerque on tour.

In college at the University of New Mexico he led the dance band and majored in anthropology, voraciously reading everything he could on the subject. He was drafted six months before graduation. He stayed in Special Services in the army for four years, and met Kenny Clarke in France in around 1944. Since there were surpluses of pianists and drummers he and Clarke took up the trombone.

Demobilized in 1945 he returned to the University of New Mexico, but they recommended he go straight to music school. While in Albuquerque he heard radio broadcasts of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, playing with Ray Brown and Milt Jackson, finding the music "unbelievable." He went to New York, where John Hammond helped pay his way to the Manhattan School of Music. There, while waiting on his union card, he played a string of one-nighters, mostly on 52nd Street with traditional trumpeter Hot Lips Page among others. Then Kenny Clarke returned from the army and introduced him to Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy hired Lewis for his big band during the summer of 1946, and Lewis decided to stay with him rather than returning to school that fall. Lewis became Dizzy's arranger. To give the horns a rest during performances Lewis and the rest of the rhythm section, including Milt Jackson (b. 1923) on vibes, formed a small group. This became the start of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Lewis eventually completed his Master of Music degree at the Manhattan School in 1953.

MJQ

The group, calling itself the Milt Jackson Quartet, recorded on Dizzy's label Dee Gee. By 1952, however, Lewis had come up with a clear identity for the group, one which would emphasize connections to European classical music, but with a distinctly jazz sound. He kept the same initials for the band, but called it the Modern Jazz Quartet.

The music was a synthesis which Lewis was highly qualified to bring about, and he was in the right place at the right time to have the musicians to put it together. He also wanted to "reform" jazz away from long solos and emphasis on high energy. His concept, therefore, included greater interaction among the musicians, fewer extended solos and more structure to the arrangements, which often had several sections or strains to them. Counterpoint was a big factor, and so was the blues. He generated a sound which became virtually a unique style itself. Passion was present but measured; timbres shimmered; the music achieved a clarity and delicacy unique in jazz at the time. Lewis had everyone dress in tuxedos and bow to the audience before they played, offering an eminently dignified appearance, comparable to that of a classical chamber group. It worked. Appreciation for the MJQ became synomous with highbrow taste in jazz. The band caught on and they were booked for concerts on both sides of the Atlantic, only rarely playing clubs.

In 1961 he gave his reasons for preferring a small group over a big band: ...because of the nature and number of instruments in our group we have to imply some of he things we want to say. If you have a big band, with lots of instruments, you can be direct and realistic. But when you say something in music-or in any form of art-by implication, you're giving your listener a better chance to participate in what you are doing. It's more subtle and may mean more work, but it can give everyone a more complete feeling of satisfaction (Simon).

Ray Brown dropped out early on to play with Ella Fitzgerald, whom he married. He was replaced on bass by Percy Heath (b. 1923). In 1955 Kenny Clarke quit, uncomfortable with Lewis's restrictions on his drumming. He was replaced by the young Connie Kay (b. 1927), which stabilized the personnel for the band until it dissolved in 1974.

Lewis and the other musicians organized the band cooperatively, so there was no leader in the usual sense. They split all the money equally and divided the tasks of the band. Lewis was artistic and music director; Heath handled the business.

The MJQ lasted until 1974, when Milt Jackson left because he felt he wasn't making enough money compared to the current rock musicians. It reunited briefly in 1975 and then again in 1981.

Other Classical/Jazz Syntheses

In the aftermath of the bebop revolution jazz was reaching a level of maturity which made comparison and even synthesis with European classical music obvious to a number of innovators. Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Gunther Schuller, and Lennie Tristano were also moving in this direction. What set the Modern Jazz Quartet's sound apart from them was its strong commitment to blues in feeling and sound. Lewis has told Whitney Balliett, "I try to find blues in all non-blues."

The Best of the MJQ

Lewis composed for the band. His most famous composition is "Django," from 1960, which is included in this program. The group's best recording, according to Len Lyons, is the European Concert double album on Atlantic, from 1960. Lyons says this concert album recorded in Stockholm

...has long been considered the band's "perfect" album for its ideal balance between structure and self-expression, its consistently creative soloing, and its fine versions of the best MJQ originals. The quartet's members demonstrate an uncanny ability to fuse their individuality into a single voice (101 Best Jazz Albums, 211).

Whitney Balliett has said that the band's subtlety "misled the unknowing into regarding it as a cocktail group and the knowing into scoffing at it as staid and stuffy" He has described the band's sound as a "tintinnabulous texture" which "shimmers...rings and hums. It sounds like loose change. As in any first-rate mechanism its parts are as notable as their sum" (240).

Lewis's Style

Lightness and delicacy characterize Lewis's style, but this has never prevented him from swinging. His timing conveys the feeling more than his accentuation. He tends to play slightly behind the beat, which stretches the time-just as Basie did in a big band context-into the realm of hipness. At times his left hand comping is barely audible, making him susceptible to the criticism of lacking "bottom." He knows how to use contrast, however, so that when he dips down to that register it comes as an awakening surprise.

Lewis is also a master of careful improvised developmental structure. His thorough familiarity with 18th century classical forms enabled him to do this in jazz. He can begin with one or two simple motifs and generate an entire multi-chorus solo based on them. His approach is never to rush into it, never to offer too much too fast, but rather slowly build energy and content, carefully drawing the listener into what is ultimately a bebop solo. His spaces are as meaningful as his phrases. This gradual build-up offers the listener a deeper, more personal aesthetic experience, one which is outside the realm of high energy/high impact jazz.

Moreover, Lewis is a thoroughgoing devote of polyphony, and his most famous compositions- "Versailles," "Concorde," "Three Windows" and "Vendome" as well as "Django"-have polyphonic sections built into them.

Other Activities

Despite Lewis's preference for the small group he did organize an orchestra for the purpose of combining classical and jazz styles. In 1962, together with Gunther Schuller, he put together Orchestra U. S. A., which contained 28 players taken from both the classical and jazz worlds, including a full string section. It included jazz musicians Phil Woods on alto sax, Eric Dolphy on tenor, Jim Hall on guitar, and Herb Pomeroy on trumpet among others. Lewis wrote for the orchestra and Schuller conducted it, since he could better communicate with players from both traditions. Lewis gave the string section a year to learn how to swing. The orchestra was the embodiment of the "third stream" approach theorized by Lewis and Schuller and lasted until 1965.

Lewis has been very involved in jazz education. In the late 60s he organized a jazz summer school in Lenox, Massachusetts. After the MJQ disbanded in 1974 Lewis accepted a job teaching at City College in New York. He also was musical advisor to the Monterey (California) jazz festival, from 1958 to 1982. He also recorded Bach's complete Well-Tempered Clavier in 1981.

Also in the early 80s, besides performing with the reunited MJQ he had his own sextet, the John Lewis Group, and in 1985 he founded the American Jazz Orchestra along with Gary Giddens and Roberta Swann.

Bibliography

• Cook, Richard and Brian Morton. The Penguin Guide to Jazz on LP, CD & Cassette. New York: Penguin, 1992.
• Coss, Bill. "John Lewis and the Orchestra." Down Beat, February, 1963.
• Goldberg, Joe. Jazz Masters of the Fifties. New York: Macmillan, 1965.
• Gridley, Mark. Jazz Styles a History and Analysis, Fourth Ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1991.
• Kernfeld, Barry. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988, rpt. 1996; "John Lewis" by Thomas Owens, 694-96.
• Lyons, Len. The 101 Best Jazz Albums: A History of Jazz on Records. (New York: William Morrow, 1980).
• Lyons, Len. The Great Jazz Pianists: Speaking of Their Lives and Music. Quill*: New York, 1983.
• Simon, George T. "He Just Reaches and There It Is." New York Herald Tribune, August 13, 1961.