Ravinia 2024 Issue 6

ASHLEY WHEATER, MBE Ashley Wheater has dedicated his life to dance. Born in Scotland, he trained at The Royal Ballet School in England and soon worked with Fred- erick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, and Michael Somes in numerous ballets at Covent Garden, including Swan Lake , Sleeping Beauty , Giselle , Manon , Anastacia , and The Dream . On Rudolf Nureyev’s advice, Wheater joined London Fes- tival Ballet and danced in Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet and Sleeping Beauty , Glen Tetley’s Sphinx and Greening , and more classics and new cre- ations, ascending to Principal Dancer at age 20. In 1982, he joined Australian Ballet, where he continued dancing principal roles in both clas- sical and contemporary work, especially in John Cranko’s full-length ballets. In 1985, at the in- vitation of Gerald Arpino, Wheater joined The Joffrey Ballet. For the next four years, he per- formed various works by American choreogra- phers, including Arpino, Laura Dean, William Forsythe, Mark Morris, and Paul Taylor, as well as repertoire by Ashton and Cranko. Joining San Francisco Ballet in 1989, he continued his creative career working under Helgi Tomasson and with choreographers James Kudelka, David Bintley, and many more. In 1997, he retired from dancing and was appointed Ballet Master and, later, Assistant to the Artistic Director at San Francisco Ballet. Since his 2007 appointment as artistic director of The Joffrey Ballet, he has invited world-renowned choreographers and fresh young talent to create new work on the company. Wheater has added new full-length works to the Joffrey’s repertoire, including Lar Lubovitch’s Othello , Ronald Hynd’s The Mer- ry Widow , and Yuri Possokhov’s Don Quixote . Wheater is on the Advisory Board for Dance Magazine, serves as Artistic Advisor for Chi- Arts, and is Advisor to the Arts for the Lincoln Academy of Illinois. He received the Boeing Game-Changer Award in 2008, was named an Lincoln Academy Laureate by the State of Illi- nois in 2010 and “Chicagoan of the Year” by the Chicago Tribune in 2013, received the University of Chicago Rosenberger Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Creative and Performing Arts in 2015, and was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019. THE URBAN KNIGHTS The Urban Knights are an all-star jazz, R&B, and funk band that comprises Chicago’s finest musi- cians: Grammy-nominated guitarist Henry Johnson, who has toured the world with Hank Crawford, Freddie Hubbard, Jimmy Smith, Sonny Stitt, Stanley Turrentine, Joe Williams, and Nancy Wilson; drummer Charles Heath, who has played with Donald Byrd and McCoy Tyner; keyboardist Tim Gant, who has toured with George Howard, Art Porter, Will Downing, Rick Braun, and En Vogue; and bassist Joshua Ramos, who has played with Philip Bailey, Marquis Hill, and Willie Pickens. The Urban Knights were also jazz legend Ramsey Lewis’s backing band for a decade and are featured on his record Urban Knights VII . The Urban Knights appeared at Ravinia with Lewis nearly every year between 2011 and 2019, as well as in 2022 as part of Kurt Elling and Marquis Hill’s tribute concert to Lewis. Chicago-born guitarist Henry Johnson began playing at age 12. During formative years in Mem- phis, he delved into play- ing gospel music, and by age 14 he was playing in R&B groups. Johnson’s immersion in jazz began with hearing Wes Montgomery in 1967; through the 1970s, he cultivated a reputation on the South Side of Chicago as a go-to jazz guitarist. By the end of the decade, Johnson had toured with organist Jack McDuff and vocalist Donny Hathaway and began playing with Ramsey Lew- is, then, in 1985, he became part of vocalist Joe Williams’s core group. Johnson’s debut recording on MCA, You’re the One (1986), hit number one on multiple charts for as long as two months, earning a Grammy nomination and five stars from DownBeat . His subsequent albums Future Excursions (1988) and Never Too Much (1990) also reached the top 10. With Heads Up Interna- tional, he released New Beginnings (1993) and Missing You (1994), then recorded An Evening at Sea aboard the Queen Elizabeth II in 1999. Johnson’s latest album, 2003’s Organic featur- ing legendary vocalist Nancy Wilson, is backed by his Organ Express band, patterned after the hard-swinging jazz groups of the ’60s. Johnson teaches Jazz Guitar Studies on the faculty of the Chicago College of Performing Arts. Versatile and renowned drummer Charles “Rick” Heath IV began exercis- ing rhythms early grow- ing up in Chicago. Putting aside forks and spoons for proper sticks, he won numerous talent shows while still in grammar school and moved along to work professionally across the city by age 14. While attaining a music performance degree at Shaw University in North Carolina, Heath formed his first quartet, Touch of Jazz. Returning to Chicago, he quickly took up regular collaborations with the likes of Von Free- man, the Ken Chaney Xperience, and Malachi Thompson, and he featured on an Oscar Brown Jr. documentary. Beyond shows at Chicago Jazz Festival and the Chicago Jazz Showcase, Heath hit the road for shows at Birdland (Edmonton), The Blue Note (Poznan and Tokyo), San Juan Jazz Festival, BB King’s (New York), Jazz Alley (Seattle), Ronnie Scott’s (London), and Le Duc Des Lombards (Paris), as well as a production of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess in Vienna. He also produced the concert series Charles Heath Presents: Jazz’n on the South Side, featuring both international and local talent. Heath is also a dedicated teacher, creating or leading school programs at Ruggles Elementary, Alain Locke Charter School, South Shore High School, Kellar Middle School, and the New Direction Outreach Center, as well as founding the Heath School of Music at Kennicott Park in Chicago. Keyboardist Tim Gant was born and raised in Chicago on the same R&B and jazz sounds that influenced so many others. Around age 8, he started out playing the drums, but by age 10 also picked up the trom- bone. In his teens, however, Gant had an abun- dance of musical ideas that needed an outlet that brass couldn’t provide, so he picked up piano, discarding his resistance to playing the same in- strument as his older sibling. His parents weren’t musicians, but recordings were omnipresent, of- ten playing jazz be-bop from early morning to evening. Gant’s mother and Ramsey Lewis’s sis- ter were close friends, so his records were often in rotation with the likes of Nat King Cole, Miles Davis, and Oscar Peterson. His brothers, in turn, shared the music of James Brown, Parliament, Sly &The Family Stone, and Earth, Wind & Fire, the latter catalyzing Gant’s journey into making music. While in junior college, he began working with an R&B band that would win the Budweis- er Showdown in DC, earning a recording con- tract and shows in Japan. Alongside numerous touring and session opportunities in the years since—including a five-year stint with Art Por- ter—Gant has earned recognition as a composer, co-writing Rick Braun’s “Daddy-O,” writing for Aretha Franklin, and penning a multi-platinum hit on the Backstreet Boys’ first album. Born in 1982 to a musical family in Chicago—his parents both vocalists and his father also a vi- olist— Joshua Ramos picked up the string bass in seventh grade, learning from bassist Margaro Torres, a cousin of Salsa pianist/arranger Edwin Sanchez. While attend- ing Whitney Young High School, Ramos played in the Concert and Jazz Bands as well as a rock band that specialized in Red Hot Chili Peppers, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Rage Against RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 81 CHERYLMANN(WHEATER)