The measures of a man
To mark the bicentennial of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Ramsey Lewis dedicated himself to the proposition that the 16th president's story could be told in music
THE LAND OF LINCOLN CELEBRATING yet again its favorite son? (No, not Barack Obama, yet.) Surely the 16th president isn't short on tributes around these parts, even in years unlike this one, which marks the bicentennial of his birth. ¶ Zoom along I-90 and see a theme park of billboards bearing Abe's famously blank expression, or day-trip to towns such as Galesburg or Springfield where museum-like shrines still serve the public daily.
But as an unintended consequence, Lincoln saturation in Illinois also has made it too easy to glance past this remarkable man.
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When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Ravinia Festival, Green Bay at Lake Cook, Highland Park
Tickets: pavilion, $45; lawn, $15
Info: (847) 266-5100 or www.ravinia.org
Ramsey Lewis agrees. Chicago's great jazz son was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival, where he serves as the artistic director of its Jazz at Ravinia series, to write a musical work celebrating Lincoln. But the composer-pianist-radio personality soon realized he only vaguely understood what he calls "the surface of the man."
"Before I started writing this work, I was pretty limited to just the reading and study I did in school," he said over the phone one afternoon from his home in Streeterville. "Now that I know his sense of humor, his sensitivity, his humbleness, his compassion, I started feeling the man."
When preparations were complete, Lewis had read exhaustively, collaborated closely with acclaimed University of Pennsylvania scholar Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. and visited several museums.
The result is his panoramic, eight-movement "Proclamation of Hope: A Symphonic Poem," one of Lewis' most ambitious compositions ever. "All the training I've ever had in my life comes into play in this music," he said. "This is a major work."
On Friday, Ravinia will present the world premiere of "Proclamation of Hope," with Lewis on piano, joined by the 23-member Freedom Collective, conducted by Scott Hall. The work runs two hours with an intermission.
Though its subtitle is "A Symphonic Poem," the work is rooted in the idiom that has long defined Lewis' career, beginning in 1956 with his first album, "Ramsey Lewis and the Gentlemen of Swing." As musicologist Ramsey writes in the program notes: "It should come as no surprise that Lewis has taken this model [for 'Proclamation of Hope' from his home turf: the art of jazz."
From there, "Proclamation of Hope" was set to a pageant of sociopolitical change. It views the Great Emancipator via the prism of the recent election of Barack Obama. "In fact, it wasn't until Obama was voted in until I began to realize what the work was all about," Lewis said, adding that the United States had politically matured and finally had finished what Lincoln put in motion almost two centuries before.
For Lewis, the turning point in the creative process was when he discovered that Lincoln, while working on a barge in Mississippi, had witnessed firsthand the horror of a family being torn apart. At this point, Lewis felt that Lincoln's reaction to slavery was genuinely "deep down" and "not pretend."
Lewis uses this as a defense to Lincoln's alleged dark side, such as not supporting the issue of interracial marriage. Like the slaves themselves, Lewis believes Lincoln -- in his own way -- was oppressed and a victim of his era.
Each movement of "Proclamation of Hope" speaks not only to Lincoln's life, but also to its subsequent effects over the course of this nation's history. From his pastoral upbringing in rural Kentucky and Indiana to the civil rights struggles of the last century, tracing the history of Lincoln is to trace the arc of America. The last movement, titled "16/44: A More Perfect Union," celebrates our current moment in time.
"It does not have the sound of a typical '40s or '50s big band, but more of a classical-sounding band," Lewis said, adding that he scored the work for French horns, tuba, clarinets, as well as the standard big-band trumpets, trombones and saxophones. He also wrote for a vocalist to sing along wordlessly to imbue the work with emotion truer to the slave experience.
Feelings ran amok for Lewis during the writing process, none of which had anything to do with its subject matter. Shortly after he set out on this time-consuming opus early last year, doctors noticed a spot on his pancreas. While the growth was not cancerous, Lewis underwent a successful operation called the Whipple, which was supposed to keep him in the hospital only for a week or two.
"Then things started happening," said Lewis, 74, in disbelief, citing a blood clot in his lung and other pesky little ailments that kept him sidelined for five months. A full year had passed before he finally had finished his score.
More recently, he experienced turmoil when his longtime radio outlet, WNUA-FM (95.5), changed its format from smooth jazz to Latin pop. Now Lewis' syndicated "Legends of Jazz" is broadcast from the Chicago Recording Company. Not heard in Chicago, the program still airs Sundays in more than 60 U.S. cities. "That station may have disappeared, but the show hasn't," Lewis said.
Meanwhile, the three-time Grammy winner just completed his first trio album in five years, "Songs From the Heart: Ramsey Plays Ramsey." Out of his 80-plus albums, it will be the first to consist of all original compositions. (He's posted a preview on his MySpace page.)
And of course he's looking forward to Friday, when "we will celebrate a man, his work and his powerful legacy in one of America's greatest art forms."
Bryant Manning is a locally based free-lance writer and critic.