ABSTRACT
While researching Groovin' High, biography of Dizzy Gillespie, the author became intrigued by the significant role of pianist John Lewis in the development of Dizzy's 1946 big band, not least because it was this ensemble that was the midwife for the Modern Jazz Quartet. He didn't have the opportunity to talk to John Lewis at that time, but we subsequently made up for it with this conversation for Piano magazine, which appeared in the July 2000 issue. Lewis built his reputation as a modern jazz musician, a bebop pioneer, playing in Dizzy Gillespie's big band, Charlie Parker's quintet, the Miles Davis Nonet, and, most notably, the Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ), itself an offshoot of Gillespie's rhythm section of the late 1940s. When the MJQ was temporarily out of action with the death of its drummer Connie Kay, he has always found a place for genuine baroque music alongside his own latter-day experiments in counterpoint.
