Marquis Hill adds to the Chicago chapter in tribute to Ramsey Lewis
By James Turano
Ravinia always has been the most “in” place to be, offering the most “in” performers, and attracting the most “in” crowd.
And that perfect storm of “ins” all converge when the festival offers a celebratory, star-studded jazz homage to the ultimate “in” jazz man.
“Legends of Jazz: Honoring Ramsey Lewis” hits the storied Pavilion stage on June 19, featuring an impressive slate of singers and musicians who are admirers of, and have been influenced by, the innovative, internationally acclaimed, Chicago-born American jazz legend Ramsey Lewis.
With a roster of accomplished, gifted, passionate practitioners and players with Chicago roots and connections, including Kurt Elling, Marquis Hill, Lizz Wright, and Bobby Lewis with the J.W. James A.M.E. Church Choir with members of Urban Knights, all fêting the guest of honor, it promises an evening of jazz and joy.
Trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Marquis Hill explained how the Lewis tribute program originally was conceptualized: “I was meeting with my creative team, and I wanted to do some kind of musical program to feature a small group of musicians. And in our discussions, Ramsey’s name came up.
“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 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.
Having 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. Two years later he helped establish the Jazz Mentor Program, today the longest-running in-school initiative of Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play music education programs.
Ramsey Lewis, still a proud resident of Chicago, has enjoyed an expansive, robust career of more than 50 years, which in addition to recording and performing, also has included a popular stint for several years as a radio personality.
The hipster pianist’s first mainstream 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 Invasion 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 ruffled some purists, Lewis commitment to jazz is undisputed. To wit, Lewis is one of jazz’s best and most enthusiastic 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 programming 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 University 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 Chicago-area jazz venues, playing with and learning from local legends like Von Freeman, Fred Anderson, and Ernest Dawkins.
Marquis Hill joined the Jazz Mentor Program in 2003, his first year in high school, where he worked closely with another Chicago jazz piano legend, Willie Pickens (center) and eight other local jazz pros—the start of an evergreen connection to Ravinia that has now seen him featured on three storied stages.
“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 passions about music that I had. I learned to collaborate with others like me.
“Plus, to be surrounded by so many talented and enthusiastic teachers 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 belonged,” 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 December 2016, as well as guesting with the Jazz Mentors during a 2018 program 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 eventually 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 music 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.
“I understand these musical labels and genres are the language we use to describe music, but I don’t view music that way. It all comes from the same source,” Hill stressed.
Hill’s trumpet style has been compared to aspects of the incomparable Miles Davis and other jazz virtuosos like Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, and Donald Byrd. DownBeat magazine described a “glass-like lucidity” in his playing of “groove-laden arrangements” that elevate his “fluid improvisational style.” In 2016, he placed first in the Rising Star, Trumpet category of the magazine’s highly regarded critic’s poll.
Earlier this year, Hill released his latest collection, New Gospel Revisited, which highlights a list of high-octane musicians including Walter Smith III, Joel Ross, James Francies, Kendrick Scott, and Harish Raghavan. The album features an exhilarating, urgent, live reimagining of his 2012 debut, New Gospel.
“This album is just one of the projects I have been working on. I am always looking to create. I have a few new projects and ideas I will be recording in the fall, and I am also touring. It’s nice to finally be able to get back and playing for people,” he said.
“The last few years with COVID hanging over us brought things to a stop in many ways. But it also gave me time to focus. I chose to use this time positively and creatively,” Hill added.
“[That creative process] has changed over the years. I used to sit down at a piano and write everything down. It was very conventional. But today, I will start playing my trumpet or other instruments and get a feel for something and find small fragments that can be built into something bigger. And now with technology, I will take those random pieces and, depending what software I am using, will begin to flesh it out into a demo.
“Of course, that demo then changes again when I get into a studio and start playing it for and with musicians. Then it takes on another new life. That’s when the magic begins,” he enthusiastically said.
Hill mused on why Ravinia is one of the best music venues to play: “I have been fortunate to have played all around the world, and Ravinia is easily among the top tier—the top five—venues to play in the entire world. There is such a history on the Ravinia stage. I believe the spirit of all those great performers of the past who have played on that stage still lives on that stage. You can feel it. I know I can.” Ramsey Lewis has been part of that “in” crowd more than 40 times over. And with a new generation of like-minded adherents like Hill, the spirit will keep dressin’ fine and makin’ time. ●
James Turano is a freelance writer and a former entertainment editor, feature writer, and columnist for national and local magazines and newspapers. He has written official programs for eight Elton John tours since 2003 and is also a Chicago radio personality and host on WGN 720AM.