West Michigan Jazz Musician of the Year: Rick Reuther

By Enrique Olmos and John Sinkevics
LocalSpins.com

Rick Reuther was 7 years old when a salesman wielding an accordion appeared at his family’s front stoop. The man was making his rounds through the neighborhood, knocking on each door, selling accordion lessons.

Reuther’s mother, who hoped he’d take piano lessons, saw the obscure instrument as a compromise, noticing her son’s curiosity at the wind-powered keys and its whimsical sound. Reuther signed up for lessons on the spot and took quickly to the instrument. But as “a restless kid,” he turned to other instruments soon after learning the accordion.

In 1964, after watching The Beatles’ first American television performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Reuther set his sights on learning guitar and mastering an instrument he’d carried all along: his own voice.

“It changed everything for me. I was 11 years old in 1964 when The Beatles showed up on television. I realized a couple of things. I realized, number one, that I needed to learn how to play guitar and, number two, that the melodic and harmonic part of what they were doing was a game-changer. That really kind of changed my direction,” says Reuther, who graduated from Plymouth Salem High School.

These days, Reuther is known as a jazz singer and a crooner of classics, and was recognized as 2025’s Jazz Musician of the Year by the West Michigan Jazz Society. He says he was “flattered” by the award, mentioning what an honor it is to be included among a list of other top-tier performers in the area.

As for what keeps him at it, Reuther says music has been a part of his life for as long as he can recall.

“I’ve been doing this for more than 50 years now. This is pretty much all I’ve done. I got a business degree from college and immediately turned my back on it for music,” Reuther says. “When I’m not performing, I feel adrift. This is what I do, it’s part of me, it’s part of what reminds me who I am.”

Throughout his schooling days, Reuther sang in multiple choirs, developing his voice while aspiring to the vocal work of revered solo artists like Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald. While attending Michigan State University, he began gigging heavily around Lansing and East Lansing, both as a solo acoustic act and as lead singer of the Park Avenue Quintet.

After college, Reuther relocated to the Detroit area, where he performed around the city’s suburbs, including at the historic Raven Gallery in Southfield, a hub for folk music in the 1960s and 1970s that was graced by a number of revered songwriters, including Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell.

It was there, among the stillness of an attentive listening room, that Reuther honed his skill set as a solo performer.

He’d take his solo act as far as the East Coast, performing at resorts and hotels up and down the Eastern Seaboard, from Cape Cod to Portland, Maine, with a hope to connect with audiences through the emotion of music. After a stint in California, he returned to Michigan and settled in Grand Rapids in the mid-1980s. He’s since recorded six solo albums at musician Tom Hagen’s studio as well as a CD with singer Mary Rademacher.

He recently took about five weeks off due to knee surgery, but is back performing again. He’ll play Testa Rossa Ristorante at 1017 Wealthy St. SE in Grand Rapids on Jan. 20 with Tom and Cherie Hagen, returning there on March 4 and March 18 with keyboardist Chris Corey.

“I want audiences to feel something. Being a performer and being able to impress people is great and you see guys with great chops doing all kinds of stuff that is very impressive, but being impressed is not a feeling,” he insists.

“The reason I play music is because it makes me feel something, and I want people that are listening to feel something. That’s my job.”

— Find more Michigan music news and concert listings at LocalSpins.com. Email John Sinkevics at john@localspins.com.