MODERN JAZZ QUARTET’S ABQ ROOTS
The Modern Jazz Quartet may have looked and sounded like the epitome of East Coast urban cool of the 1950s and 1960s, but its musical soul came from a kid who grew up on Albuquerque’s Coal Avenue and double majored in anthropology and music at the University of New Mexico.
John Aaron Lewis (1920-2001) was born into a musically oriented extended family, started learning classical piano at age 7, developed an interest in jazz from records played by a dance-loving aunt, and led a dance band while in college. (The quartet’s 1973 recording In Memoriam is an homage to Walter Keller, Lewis’ UNM piano teacher.)
During a stint in the U.S. Army that started in 1942, he played in a band with drummer Kenny Clarke, who convinced Lewis to move to New York in 1945. They soon became members of Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop-oriented big band, for whom Lewis also composed and arranged. After two years with Gillespie, Lewis began freelancing, performing with and arranging for many of jazz’s biggest names, such as Charley Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, and Miles Davis, including the latter’s landmark Birth of the Cool recording sessions in 1949 and 1950.
The Modern Jazz Quartet formed in 1952 from alumni from the Gillespie band’s rhythm section, with Lewis serving as its de facto music director, composer, and arranger. After two early personnel changes, the quartet consisted of Lewis, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Connie Kay. The quartet concertized and recorded until 1997, with The New York Times calling it “the most celebrated small group in jazz history,” in Lewis’ obituary.
Lewis also wrote the scores for several films and multiple episodes of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, served as music director of the Monterey Jazz Festival from 1958 to 1982, taught at the Lenox School of Jazz, City College of New York, and Harvard University, and founded the Jazz and Classical Music Society, which hosted concerts at New York’s Town Hall.
The National Endowment for the Arts proclaimed Lewis one of its Jazz Masters shortly before his death in 2001. In 2002, the City of Albuquerque renamed the South Broadway Cultural Center’s theater in his honor, and the Albuquerque-based John Aaron Lewis Legacy Project, a sponsor of the Aaron Diehl Trio performance, is working to ensure his legacy and further jazz education for young performers and composers. — M.T.