Faculty Biography

226_thumb

Brian Lewis

Title: Professor
Department: Ear Training

"Ear training is all about becoming a literate musician—mastering the fundamentals, covering everything musicians might encounter in their career. Acquiring a good ear doesn't happen by turning a magic key. It happens through performing experience or a systematic progressive approach that slowly builds and reinforces musical concepts through performance-related and recognition activities.

"I like to compare my job to what a strength and conditioning coach does for a professional sports team. You try to condition the ears so that when people go out to pursue their particular specialty, they're in the best shape to be a good performer, writer, producer, or wherever their career takes them.

"Students can sometimes feel out of their comfort zone in an ear training class, because they don't have their instruments to rely upon; it's just them. A lot of times I ask a student to sing something back, and that can be an intimidating experience.

"I sometimes bring in former students from my ear training classes and ensembles to play with a rehearsal band I've created outside of school. It lets students see some of the other things I do as a composer, arranger, and trumpet player. It also allows me to see the things they do, because I don't often see them in that context.

"I think it's important to be honest with students—to let them know not just what they're strong at, but also what they're weak at. Not everybody's going to master everything, and when we don't have something completely mastered, we have to recognize that and learn how to work around those situations."

  • B.M., State University of New York
  • M.M., University of Miami
  • Jazz ensemble compositions/ arrangements performed and recorded by many colleges and high schools nationally and internationally
  • Performances with the Mel Lewis Orchestra, David Clayton-Thomas, Donna Summer, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Phil Woods, Don Menza, the O'Jays, the Spinners, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Paul Anka, and others
  • Transcriptions published by Keyboard magazine

Top Five "Lesser-Known" Jazz Big Band Composer/Arrangers

Michel Camilo
Camilo is a virtuoso jazz pianist, and he is most famous for the recordings of his trio. Michel decided to orchestrate his compositions for an album entitled One More Once, and the results were tremendous. Very fresh, very exciting big band writing. I hope to hear more from him as a writer in this idiom.
Matt Harris
When I heard the University of Miami's Picadilly Lilly album of the mid-'80s, I was hooked by the great funk and Latin style writing, particularly those by Matt. I subsequently attended the U of M for my master's degree in studio-jazz writing to study with Gary Lindsay, who taught Matt and another student writer on that album—Maria Schneider. Matt went on to write and perform with the Maynard Ferguson band, as well as for TV, movies, and jazz ensemble publications.
Richard Evans
Here's a shout out to one of my favorite colleagues. When I first heard Richard's charts for the (late '60s?) early '70s Woody Herman band, I was turned on by how he effectively brought funk and contemporary Latin grooves into the big band genre. He paved the way for a lot of writers in the '70s. His arrangements for Natalie Cole were great, too, a real multi-dimensional writer.
Sammy Nestico
Speaking of swinging, it's hard to top the charts he wrote for Basie, especially on the album Straight Ahead. No one writes a better "flag-waver" than Sammy.
Benny Carter
Benny is known as a master "jack of all trades" jazz musician. He wrote the arrangements for an album by Jonah Jones with Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra that was one of the first albums I ever owned and it continues to be one of my favorites. It has some of the "swingingest" ensemble writing and playing I've ever heard.