Jazz Town: Meet Marcus Lewis, the new big-band guy in town

Forming a big band in this day and age, especially to play new music, isn’t the most practical endeavor. But Marcus Lewis, trombonist, composer and arranger on the Kansas City scene, isn’t doing it halfway.

Yes, it’s about getting his own compositions and arrangements played and heard. But it’s also “about the jazz community, and guys who wouldn’t ordinarily play together getting to play together. I think that’s very important,” Lewis says. “Musicians all over the world are a community, but locally we’re one big family. It’s an excuse to bring everyone together, and everyone has fun with the music.”

Listeners of all stripes are invited to share the fun when the Marcus Lewis Big Band, which has maybe 20 gigs under its collective belt so far, gets together at 7 p.m. Monday at the Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St.

Lewis, 37, might not be one of the best-known musicians in town yet, but he’s working on it. He arrived about three years ago from Atlanta, where he had secured a job in the touring brass section of soul sensation Janelle Monae, a native of Kansas City, Kan. He’s on the road with her several months each year — “It’s slowed down a little right now because she’s working on a new album,” he says, “but once that’s released it’ll be real busy again.”

But he stays plenty busy when he’s not touring. He’s performing here and there; writing for his own bands, big and small, and for several other people’s bands; and looking to be a mentor to a new generation of musicians.

Lewis was reared in Waynesboro, Ga., which is also the hometown of another tough trombonist, Wycliffe Gordon. Lewis grew up loving the soul and pop music on the car radio. But he was only attracted to one instrument, the one he saw leading the way in parades. “The thing that stuck out was seeing the trombones in front. I wanted to be that guy, I wanted to lead the band. … It didn’t look like any other instrument — it moved!”

He got into the horn deeply. But it wasn’t until high school that a band teacher turned him on to jazz.

“I had no idea. My town was so small, I never heard jazz until I was 16 or 17. I was into band music and wanted to write, but no jazz. He started talking to me about it. … Things totally shifted after that.”

Lewis immersed himself in independent study of the music and also got an early important lesson from Gordon. Then at Valdosta State University in Georgia, a good trombone teacher and a strict band director really helped him get his jazz together, he says.

Just out of Valdosta State with a degree in jazz performance, Lewis made his first major sojourn to the Midwest. The University of Nebraska at Omaha offered him a teaching assistant position, and he assumed leadership duties for some of the school’s jazz bands. He also kept a group working regularly in Omaha, which spurred him to write more music. And he met his wife, Andrea, a singer, in Omaha.

But the musical opportunities in Omaha were limited. He pursued a different opportunity by spending a year and a half playing music on Royal Caribbean cruise ships.

“That’s where I honed my arranging chops,” he says. “A lot of the music that was there was really terrible. I didn’t know much about arranging, but I thought I could do better. I started to write charts in my free time. People said, ‘Hey, you’re pretty good at this.’ I said, ‘Thanks, I’m still learning.’ … That was good, having time to just write and musicians to arrange for every day.”

But the musical Lewises had been thinking for some time about moving to New York. They tried it in 2005, and ended up staying about three years. “I made a ton of great connections there and learned so much about music and jazz. There were lots of like-minded people.” The connections included alto saxophonist Logan Richardson, a former Kansas Citian who played on a CD that Lewis recorded, and vibraphonist Peter Schlamb, now a Kansas Citian himself and an important cohort in Lewis’ jazz endeavors.

After three years in New York, they headed for Atlanta, “because all the friends I went to school with are in Atlanta, I had a lot of contacts, and there’s a lot of work.”

It was a good decision. There Lewis snagged his first big touring gig, with Sugarfoot’s Ohio Players.

“Sugarfoot’s health had started to fail, but I learned so much from him. And my parents were unbelievably proud that I was with him, because we could all remember being in the car, listening to the Ohio Players. … Sugarfoot made me look at certain things differently than the ways I learned in school. He was really into chords and harmony, so on the long bus rides we would always talk about that.”

Lewis also did jazz gigs in Atlanta, did some session work, and started the first version of his big band there.

Meanwhile, a keyboard-playing friend in Atlanta was serving as musical director for Monae. “He said there was a trombone spot open in her band. He said, ‘You should audition.’ I’ve been with her now for a little over five years, and that’s been a blast. … Every situation I try to look at as a learning situation, and touring on that scale is a whole different animal. I’ve really learned a lot, and I’ll still learn more, I hope.”

Eventually his wife got a job offer that would bring them from Atlanta to Kansas City. Another good move.

“I could still travel, and she’d be closer to her family. But what sealed the deal was that I had a lot of friends here. … It ended up working out.”

He wasted no time using his connections to get some jazz gigs. After a while, he says, “I felt like I met the guys I needed for a big band.”

Recruiting and retaining good players for every chair of a big band is quite a challenge. So is scheduling gigs when you have a job that keeps you on the road.

But Lewis is willing to face those challenges without wasting time: “On the road, I’m always writing jazz stuff, trying to write big-band arrangements.”

His big band’s forward-looking sound comes from his writing. He’s largely self-taught as an arranger. “Almost all our things are original — not many standards, maybe two,” he says.

The band’s sound gets some of its character from the tricky things Lewis writes for the reed section, which is usually led by Matt Baldwin. Another distinctive feature is the sound of the powerful rhythm section — usually bassist Karl McComas-Reichl and drummer Ryan Lee, with the accompaniments filled in by Schlamb’s vibes and Adam Schlozman’s guitar.

Ordinarily there’s no piano in the rhythm section, though Eddie Moore is scheduled to join for Monday’s Blue Room gig.

Lewis names as trombone influences Gordon, Slide Hampton (a role model as player and as arranger), J.J. Johnson, Curtis Fuller, Steve Davis and Robin Eubanks. But he’s also keeping his ears on some younger players — Elliot Mason, Isaac Smith, Michael Dease.

As for writing influences, he cites Wayne Shorter as a primary source. Also Dave Holland, whose band also uses vibes instead of piano for accompaniment.

As if the big band wasn’t enough, Lewis has one other substantial project in mind for Kansas City — that’s an after-school jazz program run by a nonprofit he’s starting. Future Jazz (at futurejazzkc.org) aims to bring public-school kids and private-school kids from around the city together to make music and learn from faculty members such as Lewis, trumpeter Hermon Mehari, Schlamb, Lee, bassist Bill McKemy and tenor saxophonist Matt Otto. They’ll also study theory and history and be encouraged to compose.

“It’s not just about playing jazz, it’s also about fostering creativity,” Lewis says. He wants to nurture the inquisitive side, the spirit of independent learning that gave him many of his own skills as player and arranger. “We can give information, but the most important information is what you find out through yourself — and if you’re not inspired to do that, you never learn it.”

Noteworthy

▪ The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St., also has Grupo Aztlan at 7 p.m. Thursday, pianist Roger Wilder’s quintet at 8:30 p.m. Friday and tenor saxophonist Doug Talley’s quintet at 8:30 p.m. Saturday.

▪ The Green Lady Lounge, 1809 Grand Blvd., has the Foundation 627 Big Band at 8:30 p.m. Sunday; percussionist John Kizilarmut’s trio at 9 p.m. Monday; organist Chris Hazelton’s trio at 7 p.m. Tuesday, followed by the band Sequel at 10:30 p.m.; the New Jazz Order big band at 7 p.m. Wednesday, followed by organist Ken Lovern’s OJT at 9 p.m.; guitarist Matt Hopper’s trio at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, followed by saxophonist Brett Jackson’s quartet at 9 p.m.; pianist Tim Whitmer at 5:30 p.m. Friday, followed by the Boogaloo 7 at 9 p.m. and the group B Vibe at 10 p.m.; and OJT again at 6 p.m. Saturday.

▪ Trumpeter Hermon Mehari’s group performs at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Art Factory, 5621 W. 135th St., Suite 2630, in Overland Park’s PrairieFire development.

▪ Are you up for a road trip? Or are you really into Thomas Hart Benton? Or both? A suite of music inspired by Benton highlights a concert in Columbia next week.

Pianist Orrin Evans, a former Bobby Watson sideman, brings his 10-piece Captain Black Big Band to town to perform the “Harlem Suite,” a composition by trumpeter Josh Lawrence inspired by the rediscovery of Benton’s “America Today” mural. The piece was first performed last February at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It will be heard again on Feb. 4 at the Missouri Theatre in Columbia. Check wealwaysswing.org or call 573-449-3009 for more information.

This story was originally published January 24, 2016 at 2:00 AM with the headline "Jazz Town: Meet Marcus Lewis, the new big-band guy in town."