Music for Grownups: Ramsey Lewis
How does the jazz legend manage his music, his radio shows, and a non-profit organization for underprivileged children? Simply by staying in the moment.
By: Richard Gehr | Source: AARP.org | Date Posted: 2008-08-06
Ramsey Lewis
Ramsey Lewis is part musician and part life coach. An esteemed jazz pianist, with three Grammy awards and more than 80 albums under his belt, Lewis, 73, tours regularly and has also become an active composer. When we spoke recently, he had just finished taping "The Ramsey Lewis Morning Show" for Chicago's 95.5, WNUA, where in between jazz tracks, he and co-host Karen Williams discuss personal growth and the issues of the day.
Another syndicated Lewis radio show, "Legends of Jazz," inspired a popular television series and the AARP-sponsored “Legends of Jazz” tour, which continues Oct. 19, 2008, in Tucson, Ariz. Lewis will also appear Sept. 5 at AARP's Life@50+ National Event & Expo in Washington, D.C. How does Ramsey Lewis juggle his active itinerary, which also includes a new foundation to encourage inner-city children to stay in school? Simply by living in the moment, he relates.
Gehr: What happens at a ‘Legends of Jazz’ show?
Lewis: We invite some high school and college people to join us for our sound-check and rehearsal. We have a little workshop where I talk for a minute or two and we take questions. There's a meet-and-greet for photos and autographs. At the concert itself, saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera and the group Fourtune usually join me. Then I do whatever I want.
Gehr: So you mix it up every night?
Lewis: I have 80 albums times 11 songs to draw from, and people still like to hear many of them. And a handful were big hits, so I surely have to play those at some point. I try new stuff at every show, too. It keeps the band, the audience, and me on our toes. [I say,] ‘We haven't played this song in a long time, but I can't remember what I played on it. So I'll have to make up something new.’ I throw in a lot of those songs, especially since I've been writing. A wonderful thing happened in Japan recently. We played a whole show of new songs, and then I used my so-called ‘hit’ records as encores. It really worked!
Gehr: What have you been writing?
Lewis: Abraham Lincoln's bicentennial is next year. Lincoln was born in Kentucky but spent most of his life in Illinois, so the whole state will celebrate the great scholar, lawyer, and politician. I'm jazz director of the Ravinia Festival, which is the Chicago Symphony's summer home. Several Ravinia events will salute Lincoln throughout the summer, and I'm writing one of them. The working title is ‘A Jazz Portrait of Abraham Lincoln.’ I've got to name it sooner or later, but I think I'd better get the music out of the way first. Last year, I wrote a ballet for my trio and the Joffrey Ballet [in Chicago; the Jeoffrey Ballet Center is in New York City] called ‘To Know Her....’ This year, I wrote ‘Muses and Amusements’ for jazz trio and the Turtle Island string quartet.
Gehr: Beginning with ‘The In Crowd’ in 1965, you've been particularly successful at interpreting popular music through jazz. Do you find any current pop music inspiring?
Lewis: No. The '70s was the last decade that gave us great pop music. I seldom listen to radio, but I have about 8,000 songs on my iPod—3,000 or 4,000 jazz tracks, 2,000 or 3,000 classical pieces, and a lot of pop, R&B, world music, and Latin music, from the '50s through last week.
Gehr: So what inspires you these days?
Lewis: Life, first of all. I try to stay in the moment and be observant. I enjoy my family and friends, especially my wife, who's become my muse. I used to only write a few songs whenever I had an album coming out, and if I didn't have an album coming out, I didn't write any music. So there were many years when I didn't write—although I somehow ended up with 400 or 500 songs.
Everything changed a few years ago when I started writing for the Joffrey Ballet. It was very difficult at first, and I had a deadline. I'd sit down at the piano, but it did not come easily. After six or seven weeks, my wife felt kind of sorry for me and said, ‘You're a jazz musician. Why don't you just do what you always do? Turn on a tape recorder, sit down, and start playing whatever comes into your mind? I bet something will happen.’ So I did; and it did.
I found that when I focused on the present moment and just let go and let it be, music came to me. And it came from a place that's obvious to me now but wasn't earlier on: the years I studied classical music, from the time I was five years old until I turned 2 when I entered the jazz world, and got interested in pop and R&B. My classical side was always there, but I don't know why I didn't draw upon it other than for technique. But it reappeared when I sat at the piano, put my hands on the keys, and started to play.
Gehr: Do you ever simply sit down and improvise onstage?
Lewis: I used to play two-piano concerts with Billy Taylor. We'd play ‘Body and Soul’ together. He'd do his solo version of it, I'd do my solo version of it, and then we'd come back together and take it out. During those moments, I'd just kind of let go. Sometimes I'd follow the chord changes and sometimes I wouldn't, but I trusted myself to come back one way or another.
Billy's quite the accomplished pianist and a lovely guy. Once he said to me, ‘You went into a classical-influenced thing the last time we played 'Body and Soul,' and it was really good.’ But I didn't stay with it, for some reason. Yet here it is, fifteen years later, and I'm composing by cultivating moments I allow myself to be totally free.
Gehr: How do you stay in the moment? Do you meditate?
Lewis: I do and I don't. I don't formally meditate in the lotus position on a daily basis because, for me, life itself is a meditation. I try to stay in the present throughout the day. I try to remain conscious and breathe deeply in the moment. I try to maintain a pleasant disposition. I acknowledge that whatever I'm doing at any moment is very important, even washing the dishes after lunch. It opens one up to a lot of things we sort of gloss over, moments you'll never experience again.
We spend years not being here, simply lost in thought. So I try not to get lost in thought. I try to know where I am, what I'm doing, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, and why I'm feeling it. It's hard work. I find that the word ‘contentment’ is more meaningful to me these days than ‘peace’ and ‘happiness.’ Happiness comes and goes. But ‘peace of mind’ and ‘contentment’ mean you've found a way to travel the hills and valleys of life while maintaining a certain equilibrium. You're neither knocked off your feet by the most wonderfully joyous moments nor by those moments when you get some news you'd rather not have heard.
Gehr: Could you tell us about the Ramsey Lewis Foundation?
Lewis: My wife and I had been talking about inner-city public schools, how to keep kids in school, how important music is to young people, and how public schools used to be so much better equipped with musical instruments. We started donating money to various organizations that buy instruments and pay for lessons, but eventually we thought we should do something ourselves.
The Ramsey Lewis Foundation was established a couple of years ago, and the first In Crowd Scholarships will be awarded this year to children ranging in age from five years through college. The idea is to find the next Ellington or Horowitz, but we mainly want to keep inner-city kids in school and moving through college. The scholarships are connected to a financial-literacy program, too, because I've watched musicians go through a ton of money while not having any health insurance or savings, especially in United States during the last few years.
Gehr: Read any good books lately?
Lewis: Yeah! ‘The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century,’ by Alex Ross, is entertaining, informative, and especially enlightening now that I'm deep into composition. I love reading about how the composers he writes about were inspired, how they used folk melodies, how they borrowed a phrase from their buddy and he borrowed one from them, and what was going on socially and politically when someone wrote a piece. It was thrilling.
Gehr: Anything else we should know?
Lewis: Nope. I've got to get back to the piano.
Another syndicated Lewis radio show, "Legends of Jazz," inspired a popular television series and the AARP-sponsored “Legends of Jazz” tour, which continues Oct. 19, 2008, in Tucson, Ariz. Lewis will also appear Sept. 5 at AARP's Life@50+ National Event & Expo in Washington, D.C. How does Ramsey Lewis juggle his active itinerary, which also includes a new foundation to encourage inner-city children to stay in school? Simply by living in the moment, he relates.
Gehr: What happens at a ‘Legends of Jazz’ show?
Lewis: We invite some high school and college people to join us for our sound-check and rehearsal. We have a little workshop where I talk for a minute or two and we take questions. There's a meet-and-greet for photos and autographs. At the concert itself, saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera and the group Fourtune usually join me. Then I do whatever I want.
Gehr: So you mix it up every night?
Lewis: I have 80 albums times 11 songs to draw from, and people still like to hear many of them. And a handful were big hits, so I surely have to play those at some point. I try new stuff at every show, too. It keeps the band, the audience, and me on our toes. [I say,] ‘We haven't played this song in a long time, but I can't remember what I played on it. So I'll have to make up something new.’ I throw in a lot of those songs, especially since I've been writing. A wonderful thing happened in Japan recently. We played a whole show of new songs, and then I used my so-called ‘hit’ records as encores. It really worked!
Gehr: What have you been writing?
Lewis: Abraham Lincoln's bicentennial is next year. Lincoln was born in Kentucky but spent most of his life in Illinois, so the whole state will celebrate the great scholar, lawyer, and politician. I'm jazz director of the Ravinia Festival, which is the Chicago Symphony's summer home. Several Ravinia events will salute Lincoln throughout the summer, and I'm writing one of them. The working title is ‘A Jazz Portrait of Abraham Lincoln.’ I've got to name it sooner or later, but I think I'd better get the music out of the way first. Last year, I wrote a ballet for my trio and the Joffrey Ballet [in Chicago; the Jeoffrey Ballet Center is in New York City] called ‘To Know Her....’ This year, I wrote ‘Muses and Amusements’ for jazz trio and the Turtle Island string quartet.
Gehr: Beginning with ‘The In Crowd’ in 1965, you've been particularly successful at interpreting popular music through jazz. Do you find any current pop music inspiring?
Lewis: No. The '70s was the last decade that gave us great pop music. I seldom listen to radio, but I have about 8,000 songs on my iPod—3,000 or 4,000 jazz tracks, 2,000 or 3,000 classical pieces, and a lot of pop, R&B, world music, and Latin music, from the '50s through last week.
Gehr: So what inspires you these days?
Lewis: Life, first of all. I try to stay in the moment and be observant. I enjoy my family and friends, especially my wife, who's become my muse. I used to only write a few songs whenever I had an album coming out, and if I didn't have an album coming out, I didn't write any music. So there were many years when I didn't write—although I somehow ended up with 400 or 500 songs.
Everything changed a few years ago when I started writing for the Joffrey Ballet. It was very difficult at first, and I had a deadline. I'd sit down at the piano, but it did not come easily. After six or seven weeks, my wife felt kind of sorry for me and said, ‘You're a jazz musician. Why don't you just do what you always do? Turn on a tape recorder, sit down, and start playing whatever comes into your mind? I bet something will happen.’ So I did; and it did.
I found that when I focused on the present moment and just let go and let it be, music came to me. And it came from a place that's obvious to me now but wasn't earlier on: the years I studied classical music, from the time I was five years old until I turned 2 when I entered the jazz world, and got interested in pop and R&B. My classical side was always there, but I don't know why I didn't draw upon it other than for technique. But it reappeared when I sat at the piano, put my hands on the keys, and started to play.
Gehr: Do you ever simply sit down and improvise onstage?
Lewis: I used to play two-piano concerts with Billy Taylor. We'd play ‘Body and Soul’ together. He'd do his solo version of it, I'd do my solo version of it, and then we'd come back together and take it out. During those moments, I'd just kind of let go. Sometimes I'd follow the chord changes and sometimes I wouldn't, but I trusted myself to come back one way or another.
Billy's quite the accomplished pianist and a lovely guy. Once he said to me, ‘You went into a classical-influenced thing the last time we played 'Body and Soul,' and it was really good.’ But I didn't stay with it, for some reason. Yet here it is, fifteen years later, and I'm composing by cultivating moments I allow myself to be totally free.
Gehr: How do you stay in the moment? Do you meditate?
Lewis: I do and I don't. I don't formally meditate in the lotus position on a daily basis because, for me, life itself is a meditation. I try to stay in the present throughout the day. I try to remain conscious and breathe deeply in the moment. I try to maintain a pleasant disposition. I acknowledge that whatever I'm doing at any moment is very important, even washing the dishes after lunch. It opens one up to a lot of things we sort of gloss over, moments you'll never experience again.
We spend years not being here, simply lost in thought. So I try not to get lost in thought. I try to know where I am, what I'm doing, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, and why I'm feeling it. It's hard work. I find that the word ‘contentment’ is more meaningful to me these days than ‘peace’ and ‘happiness.’ Happiness comes and goes. But ‘peace of mind’ and ‘contentment’ mean you've found a way to travel the hills and valleys of life while maintaining a certain equilibrium. You're neither knocked off your feet by the most wonderfully joyous moments nor by those moments when you get some news you'd rather not have heard.
Gehr: Could you tell us about the Ramsey Lewis Foundation?
Lewis: My wife and I had been talking about inner-city public schools, how to keep kids in school, how important music is to young people, and how public schools used to be so much better equipped with musical instruments. We started donating money to various organizations that buy instruments and pay for lessons, but eventually we thought we should do something ourselves.
The Ramsey Lewis Foundation was established a couple of years ago, and the first In Crowd Scholarships will be awarded this year to children ranging in age from five years through college. The idea is to find the next Ellington or Horowitz, but we mainly want to keep inner-city kids in school and moving through college. The scholarships are connected to a financial-literacy program, too, because I've watched musicians go through a ton of money while not having any health insurance or savings, especially in United States during the last few years.
Gehr: Read any good books lately?
Lewis: Yeah! ‘The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century,’ by Alex Ross, is entertaining, informative, and especially enlightening now that I'm deep into composition. I love reading about how the composers he writes about were inspired, how they used folk melodies, how they borrowed a phrase from their buddy and he borrowed one from them, and what was going on socially and politically when someone wrote a piece. It was thrilling.
Gehr: Anything else we should know?
Lewis: Nope. I've got to get back to the piano.
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