Ravinia mourns the tremendous loss of jazz legend Ramsey Lewis, who served as Artistic Director of Jazz at Ravinia for 25 years and was a critical partner in music education initiatives. “His influence on jazz and music in general is already etched in the history books. Especially with piano players, but also with all musicians. Ramsey helped move jazz and music forward,” said trumpeter Marquis Hill, who led the “Legends of Jazz” concert in Lewis’s honor in June. His passing will be deeply felt by everyone he worked with.
From his earliest successes in the mid-1960s through more than 40 performances on Ravinia stages—the most of any non-classical artist in the festival’s history—we are proud to have witnessed the evergreen evolution of this native son of Chicago, and we have been honored to have him part of the “Ravinia Family” for many decades. We grew ever closer since Lewis became Artistic Director of Jazz at Ravinia in 1993. A champion of music education, he helped establish and support the Ravinia Jazz Mentor Program in partnership with Chicago Public High Schools in 1995. “He knew that underrepresented kids in underserved areas would not have the access that they needed,” said Christine Taylor Conda, who oversees Ravinia’s music education programs, including the Jazz Mentors. His impact on Chicago’s youth also resonated through his work with the Merit School of Music and the Ramsey Lewis Foundation. The Ravinia Associates Board awarded him special recognition for this dedication in 2008. Lewis joined our Board of Trustees in 2003, and in 2011 he was named a Ravinia Life Trustee.
Through the early 2000s, we saw Lewis grow as a classical composer alongside his prolific passion for jazz. With the encouragement and support of then–Ravinia president Welz Kauffman, Lewis created the solo-piano works Clouds in Reverie and Watercolors for the “One Score, One Chicago” initiative; he incorporated both into his ballet score To Know Her, written for and premiered by The Joffrey Ballet at Ravinia in 2007 with Lewis’s trio performing the music live. His Ravinia commissions grew bigger—following Muses and Amusements for the Turtle Island String Quartet and his trio, Lewis created a highlight of 2009’s Abraham Lincoln bicentennial celebrations: the symphonic poem Proclamation of Hope, which was later produced for broadcast by WTTW and The Kennedy Center. His 80th birthday concert became a culminating moment as Lewis made his Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut premiering his Concerto for Jazz Trio.
His prolific jazz, of course, continued to loom large during those years as well. By the mid-’90s, the Chicago Tribune had declared that Lewis’s Jazz at Ravinia programming had taken on “musical and education dimensions unimagined at the Chicago Jazz Festival”; the Ravinia Steans Music Institute (RSMI) Program for Jazz was established in 2000 to dovetail with the weeklong mini-festival of luminary artists. Among the highlights: Lewis shared four concerts with longtime friend and legendary chanteuse Nancy Wilson, lastly performing a full set together at his 75th birthday concert. On that same date Lewis made his one indulgence during his tenure as Artistic Director of Jazz at Ravinia, joining Dave Brubeck at the piano at the end of his set. Lewis fully embraced the next generation of jazz artists onstage, too. That same concert also saw him team up with a quintet of RSMI alumni, celebrating the jazz program’s 10th anniversary, and he marked that same milestone of the Jazz Mentor Program performing with a trio of students from Lincoln Park High School.
Trumpeter Ryan Nyther, whose band The Trumpet Summit dedicated their September 12 performance at Andy’s Jazz Club to Lewis, was part of that trio. “When I was in high school, I was privileged to be a part of the Ravinia Jazz Mentor Program, and he was over that program,” Nyther said. “[It] touched me in a way that I probably wouldn’t be here today if he wasn’t in Chicago.”
For further reading on Ramsey Lewis’s memorable impacts on music at Ravinia, in Chicago, and the jazz world, see our past features by DownBeat and NPR contributor John McDonough:
“Wading No More: Ramsey Lewis Joins a New ‘In’ Crowd with His First Classical Concerto” (2015)
“Time and Place: After 78 Years, Ramsey Lewis Issues His Own Stay-At-Home Order” (2020)