Feature article written before NJLQ's soldout concert

When pianist Judy Lewis returns with the New Judy Lewis Quartet to the Tel Aviv Cinematheque stage on Friday to perform in the Jazz Tel Aviv Festival, she will finally get the recognition she deserves. It is hard to think of another Israeli jazz musician who made such an impressive leap during a period of only 10 years. But what makes Lewis' story so fascinating is not the prolific last decade of her musical life (five albums and a number of European tours), but the decade that preceded it, when she lived in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem with no music in the background.

There was a piano in the apartment Lewis shared with her husband and four children, but she did not touch it. This represented a tremendous sacrifice to a woman who had devoted all of her time to playing and achieved all of the milestones on the way to becoming a concert pianist.

"Classical music is foreign culture, and ultra-Orthodox society clearly frowns upon that sort of occupation - particularly for women," Lewis says. "But there was another factor: I was afraid. After some time passed and I had not touched the piano, I simply didn't dare go near it. It's as if you haven't called your dearest friend for a certain period of time - at some point, you don't make the call because you fear the reaction."

Lewis was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a secular, Jewish family. When she was about 17, and performing as a soloist in the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, she became religiously observant. "Musicians always search for the spiritual and I found it after meeting a charismatic rabbi," she says. When she was 20, she took a year-of-absence from her musical studies at Columbia University in New York and came to Israel. Here, she met her future husband, who was also newly religious. After they married, they lived for a while in the Jewish Quarter of the Jerusalem Old City and later in the ultra-Orthodox Ramat Polin neighborhood. Lewis worked as a seamstress and a cook, and also taught "everything," as she defines it, including halakha and Mishna in a girls' seminary. "I was very intellectual," she says.

After a few years, she realized something was wrong. "I don't remember exactly what went through my head during that time, but I mainly felt I was turning my back on my real self; that if I don't play music, I am denying myself. I also couldn't stand the way that, in ultra-Orthodox society, everything is decided for you. For years, I allowed rabbis to make decisions that affected my life - enormous decisions. Now, no one can persuade me that someone else knows better than me what is right for me."

Lewis says that she left her life in ultra-Orthodox society, "at the very last minute." According to her, "My life was like a picture which is nearly entirely erased, and only one line is left. Now, either that line will be erased, too, or you have to go out and start painting a new picture and build your own life."

The real trauma

But after the ecstatic first reunion with the world of classical music, Lewis was extremely disappointed. "I went back to studying and played a lot, but it just didn't take off. It just didn't do it for me, anymore," she says. "And that was the real trauma. Not the divorce, not leaving a house with four children, but the fact that, after two or three years, I realized I could not go back to being a classical pianist."

That depressing revelation might have caused her to lose her way had Lewis not entered a cafe in Jerusalem's Ein Karem neighborhood where Tom Regis, a jazz pianist from Los Angeles was playing while on a visit to Israel. Regis did not play innovative or daring music, but Lewis was amazed by what she heard. It is hard to believe, but that was the first time she was exposed to jazz. Music based on improvisation, "in which no one tells you what to do," she says, invoking her new spirit of independence. In an instant, she knew she had found her purpose.

Lewis' transformation from a classical pianist into a jazz pianist was not easy. At first she tried, "to get into jazz in the accepted way - by listening to major pianists, and learning how to play bebop and standards." It took a few years before she understood this method did not suit her and that her musical preferences would take her in a completely different direction. "I actually barely listen to jazz," she says, as she points to the top shelf of her CD collection where her favorites are stored. "About 95 percent of the time, I listen to progressive rock and metal."

"Bands like Dream Theater, Rush, and Metallica - those are musicians who think in a symphonic fashion - they work with many layers of sound. It's really reminiscent of classical music and close to the way that I approach composition."

Lewis' last album, "No Expectations," released in 2004, exposes her love of rock: One track is entitled, "It is Now Officially a Big Rock Show." Another track is a tribute to Frank Zappa, including wild vocals. It begins like an old standard and is suddenly interrupted by a throbbing, certifiably metal rhythm.

But there is also a lot of gentility in Lewis' music and quiet intensity. "The result is [Keith] Jarrett minus the sense of a good thing taken to wearying extremes," wrote jazz critic Stuart Nicholson in The Observer. Lewis is justifiably proud of critiques like this one, but insists that no one, including herself, has a more perfect touch on the piano than Jarrett.

Another track on her latest album, "Memoirs of a Reluctant Warrior," perfectly describes Lewis' approach to life and her art. "Life sometimes turns you into a warrior despite your intentions," she wrote on the album cover. She describes recording sessions in militant terms as well. She reports that sax player Tal Gur left one of these sessions with blisters on his lips; blood dripped from Udi Shlomo's fingers on to his drums; when the session ended at 6:30 A.M., the eyes of bass player Dovev Solomon were, "the color of tomato juice."

The toughest battle

But the toughest battle for Lewis was fighting to be heard. In Israel, her efforts are only now bearing fruit and she nearly surrendered. In an interview with the Jerusalem Kol Hazman paper last year Lewis said she was considering leaving Israel. Doors in Europe - particularly Britain - open more easily than those in Israel, but a great deal of chutzpah and determination was required there as well.

Two years ago, Lewis contacted British pianist John Taylor, one of her favorite musicians, and asked to take lessons from him during an intense two weeks. Before she left, she sent her CDs to all of the radio stations, newspapers and relevant clubs in Britain, "but there is obviously no substitute for meeting people face-to-face," she says.

During the two weeks in which she studied with Taylor, she called the clubs every day and pleaded with them to meet her. Finally, she wore down the owner of the Pizza Express Jazz Club, one of the two leading jazz clubs in London. He heard her music, liked it, and invited her to perform. After her first performance, he said she was welcome to give a series of performances in the club every six months.

Now, as a teacher in the Musrara School of Photography, Music and New Media, she shares her experience with students of music and tells them how to ensure their music is heard. "There are courses like that in music schools in the U.S., where students learn to record a demo and prepare a press package. They don't teach that in Israel, and it really is lacking. My course is entitled, 'Self-Promotion for the Independent Artist.' It includes a bit of philosophy and a lot of psychology."

She summarized her philosophy, in regard to art and her role in it, in an article she intended to publish but never sent. The article was entitled, "Empowerment through Music."

"What the audience wants, when they come to a performance, is empowerment in their own lives," Lewis says. "To be part of an experience in which the artist is bold enough to be himself and not trying to be someone else. When that happens, the artist's courage is projected onto the audience and that encourages the audience to be themselves - not just what society expects them to be. That's the chemistry of every audience, whether they know it or not. That's our responsibility as artists."