Modern Jazz Quartet Is Widely Acclaimed

Press, Volume C, Issue 29514, 16 May 1961, Page 13

Modern Jazz Quartet Is Widely Acclaimed

The Modern Jazz Quartet, one of the most accomplished and widely-acclaimed groups in jazz, will make a brief tour of New Zealand’s main centres next week, beginning in Auckland on May 22 and ending there on May 25. In between they will appear in Wellington on May 23 and Christchurch on May 24. The quartet’s New Zealand appearances will bring to a close a successful Pacific tour that began in Japan and continued in Australia. During its stay in Japan the quartet was the only jazz ensemble among the many American pierformers and groups participating in the 1961 EastWest Music Encounter. In New Zealand, the quartet will be one of the major attractions at the 1961 Auckland Festival, which will begin with the group’s first concert in the Dominion next Monday. There will be no supporting artists at its concerts. The Modern Jazz Quartet was formed in 1952 by John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath and the drummer.

Kenny Clarke. Clarke was later replaced by Connie Kay and the group’s composition has been stable since 1954. John Lewis is the quartet’s pianist and musical director. Like Milt Jackson, the vibraphonist, he was well known in jazz long before the quartet was formed, having been arranger and pianist in Dizzy Gillespie's band and Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist for a while in 1945. Lewis was born in Illinois in 1920 and began learning the piano when he was seven. He studied music and anthropology at the University of New Mexico until 1942, when he joined the Army. Lewis has been the chief creative force behind the Modern Jazz Quartet, and his talents have reached out into and beyond other fields of jazz. His compositions, including “England’s Carol” and “European Windows,” have been recorded with members of the Stuttgart Symphony Orchestra, and he has written background music for several American and French films.

The subtlety and delicacy of Lewis’s piano playing and the crisp authority of his compositions have brought him wide praise. Milt Jackson was the original leader of the quartet. Born in Detroit in 1923, he studied music at Michigan and landed his first important job with Dizzy Gillespie in 1945. After a period of free-lancing and playing with several bands, including Thelonius Monk’s, he joined Woody Herman’s Herd in 1949 and remained with it until 1950. Before forming the quartet, Jackson spent another two years with Gillespie. Percy Heath, the bass player, was born in North Carolina but grew up in Philadelphia. After war service as a fighter pilot, he went to the Granoff School of Music in Philadelphia to study the bass. In 1947 Heath joined Howard McGhee’s sextet, with which Jackson also worked for a time. A year later he made his first trip to Europe with that group, for the Paris Jazz Festival. Heath joined the Modern Jazz Quartet as a permanent member in 1954 after spending two years with Gillespie and two years free-lancing in New York. Since 1954 the quartet has gained enormous fame and prestige. Their records have been sold all over the world and they have made several tours of Europe and England, and concert appearances with the Cincinnati and Minneapolis Symphony Orchestras and the Orchestra of America.