Ravinia 2022, Issue 1

Having already made over a dozen appearances at Ravinia since 1966, Ramsey Lewis began working closer with the festival in 1993 as leader of the Jazz in June series (left) and remained the director of jazz programming for 25 years. Two years later he helped establish the Jazz Mentor Program, today the longest running in-school initiative of Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play education programs. The Ravinia Associates Board honored Lewis at its fundraiser in 2008, where he was joined by alums of the program and saxophonist Pat Mallinger (below, right), an original member of the Jazz Mentors who now leads the program. “Ramsey’s influence is etched in the history books. He helped move jazz, and music in general, forward.” — MARQUIS HILL “This tribute to Ramsey seemed natural. And it started to grow to more than just a quartet or a quintet, and now we have vocalists, a large jazz band, and a choir. I’m looking forward to putting it all together and performing it. Ramsey deserves this kind of tribute, and I am honored and pleased to be a part of it and do it for him,” Hill said. Ramsey Lewis, still a proud resident of Chicago, has enjoyed an expansive, robust career of more than 50 years, which in addition to record- ing and performing, also has included a popular stint for several years as a radio personality. The hipster pianist’s first main- stream success was his bouncy, piano-rollicking, jazz-romp signature “The In Crowd” in 1965, turning heads and ears with an infectious spirit and ultra-cool vibe. His instrumental version of the song, originally recorded by Dobie Gray (“Drift Away”) a year earlier, gave jazz music a much-needed boost during the dominating musical tidal wave of Beatlemania and The British Inva- sion of the mid-’60s. Its popularity admittedly took Lewis by surprise, as it reached the upper levels of both the pop and jazz charts and instantly introduced The Ramsey Lewis Trio (which at one time included Maurice White, who later formed Earth, Wind & Fire) to the world. Throughout his storied, varied career, Lewis widened his musical boundaries to include extensions into such genres as country, blues, and pop. And while these frequent forays ruf- fled some purists, Lewis commitment to jazz is undisputed. To wit, Lewis is one of jazz’s best and most enthu- siastic ambassadors, and in 1995, in a partnership with the Chicago Public Schools, he helped create the Ravinia Jazz Mentor Program. At that time, he also directed Ravinia’s “Jazz in June” series, having taken over its program- ming from Gerry Mulligan in 1993. MARQUIS HILL also has a strong connection to Ravinia and has quickly become a prominent force in the jazz and music scene. Hill, 35, was born in the Chatham neighborhood on the South Side and raised in a home filled with the sounds of Motown and R&B. He began playing the drums at age 4 but changed to the trumpet in 6th grade. “I took up the trumpet because my cousin played. I heard her practicing through the walls of my home, and that’s what first drew me to it,” he reminisced. During his high school years at Kenwood Academy, he honed his talents and skills as a student in the aforementioned Ravinia Jazz Mentor Program, from 2003 to 2006. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Northern Illinois Uni- versity and a master’s degree in jazz pedagogy from DePaul University. In the midst of those college years, he returned to Ravinia in 2010 as a fellow in the Steans Institute jazz program, and all the while he frequented Chica- go-area jazz venues, playing with and learning from local legends like Von Freeman, Fred Anderson, and Ernest Dawkins. “The Ravinia [connection] changed my life. No question. I was playing music in grade school, but when I entered the Jazz Mentor Program, I suddenly was among people my age who shared the same dreams and pas- sions about music that I had. I learned to collaborate with others like me. “Plus, to be surrounded by so many talented and enthusiastic teach- ers and professionals, especially the late Willie Pickens, it was invaluable. I learned from them and from their example. And to have people like that accept me and encourage me, it gave me the feeling I could make music my life. They made me feel like I be- longed,” he said. “The experience of being in the Ravinia Jazz Mentor Program also influenced me to want to someday be a mentor and a teacher. I was instilled with the appreciation that you must understand music as well as play it, and you must pass it along. That was an important lesson I learned,” he admitted. Hill ultimately realized that long- held goal and mission, having recently completed his second semester as a teacher at the famed Berklee College of Music in Boston. And Ravinia has remained a special place for Hill in his professional life, having returned to give concerts in April 2014 and De- cember 2016, as well as guesting with the Jazz Mentors during a 2018 pro- gram in memory of Pickens, who led the group of eight performer-teachers from the program’s founding until his death in 2017. This “local boy made good” made it extra good in 2014 when, at age 27, Hill won the coveted Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz competition, perhaps the most prestigious prize in the jazz world. This honor eventu- ally led to a recording deal with the respected Concord Jazz label and the well-received 2016 album The Way We Play . Much of his other recorded mu- sic has been made on his own label, Black Unlimited Music Group. Hill, like Lewis, has a sound firmly planted in the jazz soil, but Hill prefers to remove all divides or designations when it comes to music. His sound routinely incorporates tinges of hip- hop, soul, R&B, and the beat-heavy Chicago house. PREVIOUS PAGE: OREL CHOLLETTE; THIS PAGE: ROBERT LIGHTFOOT III (1993); RUSSELL JENKINS (2008) RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JUNE 15 – JULY 3, 2022 12