John Lewis

John Lewis had already arranged for Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis before becoming the Modern Jazz Quartet’s musical director, where counterpoint and the blues could inhabit the same piece without either sounding ornamental. He was one of the musicians at the centre of the Third Stream. His four-volume Well-Tempered Clavier project made that meeting unusually concrete by splitting Bach’s fugue voices between piano, guitar, bass, violin and viola, then leaving room for improvisation.