Ramsey Lewis was best known as a jazz pianist, recording over 80 albums during his lifetime, but he leaves behind another legacy: mentoring.
“He was always aware of where he came from and all he had been able to achieve and he wanted others to join him in his success”, says Charlie Grode, president and executive director of Merit School of Music, a non-profit dedicated to removing barriers to music education.
Lewis served as a mentor, and inspiration to many of Merit's students over the years, as Grode explains.
“We had a bassist who went on to play in the band with Ramsey, Joshua Ramos. And we had a more recent graduate, Julius Tucker, who now is a really fantastic jazz pianist with a following here in Chicago," he said.
In the mid 1990s, Lewis wanted to help Chicago Public School students after music education was removed from the curriculum. So, as Emeritus Director of Jazz at Ravinia, he helped start The Jazz Scholars program, the first CPS initiative of Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play programs.
“He knew that with the right teachers and the right resources, any child in the Chicago Public Schools and beyond, could achieve great things in music”, says Christine Taylor Corda, executive director of Reach Teach Play. “His commitment was that those kids could not afford or did not have that access to great music education. He wanted to make sure that wasn’t the case in the future. ”
Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play programs now impact a staggering 20,000 CPS students every year.
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