This Spring LRSmedia kicks off a 10-city LEGENDS OF JAZZ Tour Presented by AARP, featuring master pianist, three-time Grammy winner, and LEGENDS OF JAZZ Host Ramsey Lewis, Grammy Award-winning clarinetist and saxophonist and LEGENDS OF JAZZ guest Paquito D'Rivera, Grammy-nominated vocalist and LEGENDS OF JAZZ guest Kurt Elling, and the widely-popular smooth jazz quartet Fourplay.  Experience LEGENDS OF JAZZ live in concert!

Lewis is proud to be touring with this line-up of exceptional talent and called AARP "the perfect partner."  Lewis added, "All of us on the LEGENDS OF JAZZ tour look forward to celebrating AARP's 50th birthday through the language of music." Learn more about AARP and its 50th Anniversary Celebration!

The LEGENDS OF JAZZ Tour will also include a special educational opportunity for students in all 10 tour venues. Local music students in each city will learn from the legends during the sound checks prior to each performance.  The educational outreach program will be coordinated by the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE), a national organization dedicated to the continued growth of jazz and jazz education. 

LEGENDS OF JAZZ Tour presented by AARP coming to a city near you!

experience extraordinary performances™

Pianist and composer Ramsey Lewis had early gospel roots and classical training, but he gained popularity and critical acclaim with his hits like “The ‘In’ Crowd” and “Hang On Sloopy.” Lewis has 7 gold records and 3 GRAMMY Awards to his credit.  In addition to recording albums and performing live, he hosts a weekday morning drive-time radio show, “The Ramsey Lewis Morning Show” which is syndicated nationwide, as well as also hosts the syndicated “Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis,” a two hour radio program that airs in more than 75 cities throughout the U.S. and in London.  Ramsey was recently named an NEA Jazz Master, which is considered the “Oscar of Jazz.”

Cuban-born clarinetist, saxophonist, composer, and child prodigy Paquito D’Rivera is an artist whose music crosses over genre boundaries. Throughout his 50+ years as a musician D’Rivera has won 3 GRAMMY Awards and 5 Latin GRAMMY Awards as both an artist and a composer in the Latin, Jazz, and Classical genres. Among his many honors, in 2005 D'Rivera was named an NEA Jazz Masters, and in March 2007 he was honored with the Living Jazz Legend Award in a ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. The National Hispanic Academy of Media Arts and Sciences also paid tribute to Mr. D'Rivera with their Annual Achievement in Music Award for his "outstanding body of work" along with Dizzy Gillespie and Gato Barbieri. 

Fourplay is the four member international contemporary jazz super-group that has been performing together and making hits since 1991. This all-star group is comprised of keyboardist Bob James, bassist Nathan East, drummer Harvey Mason, guitarist Larry Carlton who replaced Lee Ritenour in 1998. Fourplay’s music borders on jazz with strong improvisations mixed in with large doses of pop and R&B, and this mixture of genres has captivated audiences worldwide and sold millions of Fourplay albums. All 10 of Fourplay’s released albums have peaked at a top five spot on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Chart, and their most current release X has won a GRAMMY nomination for Best Pop Instrumental Album.

Kurt Elling is the preeminent young male jazz singer today. In the past ten years Elling has earned eight GRAMMY nominations (including a 2007 nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album), spent six consecutive years at the top of the DownBeat Critics and Jazz Times Readers' polls, and won three Jazz Journalists' Association Awards for Best Male Vocalist and the Prix Billie Holiday from the Academie du Jazz in Paris. His quartet has toured the world, performing to critical acclaim in Europe, the Middle East, South America, Asia and Australia, and at jazz festivals and concert halls across the North America.

experience extraordinary performances™