Mark Lewis

Mark Lewis

Musicians | Instrument: Saxophone | Location: Seattle

A Northwest treasure.

—Jim Wilke, Jazz Northwest on KNKX, Seattle

Updated: January 29, 2024

Born: January 26, 1958

Seattle area native Mark Lewis is a well-traveled saxophonist and flutist who has created a large body of jazz music over the past four decades. He’s been a part of jazz scenes from Seattle and San Francisco to Rotterdam and Paris. His latest album, Naked Animals, was recorded in 1990 with his Quartet from the Netherlands. It's an important historical recording of a working neo-bop Quartet that had an enthusiastic following for more than a decade. His 2017 release The New York Session features piano legend George Cables, veteran bassist Essiet Essiet and drummer Victor Lewis. Mark was rated number two for alto saxophone (after Richie Cole) and number three for flute (after Charles Lloyd and Hubert Laws) in the 39th Annual Jazz Station Awards for his work on this album.

Born in Tacoma and raised on a farm outside of nearby Gig Harbor, Mark Lewis absorbed music from both sides of his family. His paternal grandmother was a concert pianist, and his maternal grandfather played saxophone (a C melody horn that Lewis started playing at age nine). Despite profound visual impairment, he had free run of the family hi-fi system and soaked up Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Art Tatum while investigating his parents’ record collection.   

Lewis’s waking hours were filled with music through his school years, and he went on to study composition, flute, electronic music, and piano at Western Washington University and the Cornish Institute of Allied Arts.  

Settling in Seattle, Lewis started performing regularly at Norm Bobrow’s Jazz at the Cirque showcase, and quickly found invaluable colleagues and mentors amongst resident masters like Art Foxall, Bea Smith, Dee Daniels, and Buddy Catlett. Drum master Otis “Candy” Finch, who moved to Seattle after a sterling New York career recording with heavyweights like Stanley Turrentine, Herbie Hancock and Dizzy Gillespie, recognized Lewis’s budding talent and took him under his wing. He also encouraged him to get out of town, and in 1978 the 20-year-old saxophonist flew to Europe with a one-way ticket and his alto sax, $500 in his pocket, and virtually no contacts. 

He ended up making Rotterdam his homebase for the next 14 years and established himself as a vital force on the international jazz scene as a player, label owner, and producer. Building an extensive network of musical peers amongst Dutch players and American ex-pats (“Johnny Griffin got me my first gig in Europe,” Lewis recalls), he maintained three working Dutch groups, including an organ trio with Carlo de Wijs; an experimental-minded Quartet with Willem Kühne, James Long, and Frans van Grinsven; and a world-jazz quintet featuring musicians from India, Holland, West Africa, and South America. 

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Album Review

Mark Lewis: Sunlight Shines In

Read "Sunlight Shines In" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Saxophonist/flutist Mark Lewis, who has returned to his native Washington state after years of making beautiful music around the world, escorts a quartet of talented West Coast musicians through eleven of his upbeat compositions on Sunlight Shines In, with trumpeter Nolan Shaheed sitting in on two numbers. Although Lewis' tunes won't widen any horizons, they are resolutely earnest and congenial and provide a pleasurable listening experience. Lewis plays alto sax on six tracks, flute on four, tenor ...

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Recording

Saxophonist/Composer Mark Lewis Cements A New Creative Collaboration On 'Sunlight Shines In,' To Be Released March 24 On Audio Daddio Records

Saxophonist/Composer Mark Lewis Cements A New Creative Collaboration On 'Sunlight Shines In,' To Be Released March 24 On Audio Daddio Records

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity

Veteran alto saxophonist/flutist Mark Lewis convenes a West Coast jazz summit on Sunlight Shines In, set for a March 24 release on the Audio Daddio label. Recorded in 2019, the album teams Seattle-area-based Lewis with the superb Southern California pianist Ron Kobayashi and his trio (bassist Baba Elefante and drummer Steve Dixon) on a set of Lewis’s original compositions, with ace trumpeter (and the album’s recording engineer) Nolan Shaheed joining in on two tracks. Born and raised in Washington State, ...

2

Recording

'Naked Animals,' A 1990 Recording By Saxophonist/Flutist Mark Lewis & His Long-Lived Rotterdam-Based Quartet, Set For First Release On April 2

'Naked Animals,' A 1990 Recording By Saxophonist/Flutist Mark Lewis & His Long-Lived Rotterdam-Based Quartet, Set For First Release On April 2

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity

Alto saxophonist/flutist Mark Lewis revisits a chapter from his own musical history on Naked Animals, set for an April 2 release on the Audio Daddio label. Recorded in 1990, the album features eight original compositions performed by Lewis’s Dutch quartet, the working unit he maintained through most of his 14-year residency in jny: Rotterdam: pianist Willem Kühne, bassist James Long, and drummer Frans van Grinsven. A native of Washington State, Lewis was all of 20 years old when he settled ...

1

Recording

Alto Saxophonist Mark Lewis's "The New York Session" To Be Released By Audio Daddio, January 27

Alto Saxophonist Mark Lewis's "The New York Session" To Be Released By Audio Daddio, January 27

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity

As well-traveled and widely recorded as alto saxophonist Mark Lewis has been over the past four decades, his new CD The New York Session is likely to be the album that helps rectify his current under-the-radar reputation. Recorded last year in Brooklyn with a world-class rhythm section—pianist George Cables, bassist Essiet Essiet, and drummer Victor Lewis—the new disc will be released by Lewis’s Audio Daddio label on January 27. It’s the work of an artist clearly reveling in the company ...

“Paul Desmond cool, deliciously bluesy” – George W. Harris, Jazz Weekly 

"A distinctive original" – Paul de Barros, Earshot Jazz 

“an innate lyrical bent that makes one think of what Art Pepper might be sounding like if he was still with us” – Larry Hollis, Cadence Magazine 

“I feel like I’m getting transported to a whole other auditory universe.”  –Joe Dimino, Neon Jazz 

“Original music … lyrical and beautiful … very fine album.” – Dr. Debra Jan Bibel

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Concerts

  Wed, Apr 24
San Francisco, CA
Mark Lewis Quartet
Black Cat
Wed, Apr 24. 7:00 pm
  Wed, Apr 24
San Francisco, CA
Mark Lewis Quartet
Black Cat
Wed, Apr 24. 9:15 pm
  Fri, Apr 26
Oakland, CA
Mark Lewis Quartet
The Sound Room
Fri, Apr 26. 7:30 pm
  Sun, Apr 28
San Francisco, CA
Mark Lewis Quartet
Chez Hanny
Sun, Apr 28. 4:00 pm
Apr24Wed
Mark Lewis Quartet
Black Cat
San Francisco, CA
Apr24Wed
Mark Lewis Quartet
Black Cat
San Francisco, CA
Apr26Fri
Apr28Sun
Mark Lewis Quartet
Chez Hanny
San Francisco, CA