This Friday (March 21st) the stellar pianist, educator, composer Jason Moran visits Miami to perform a concert of Duke Ellington’s music with the Frost Jazz Orchestra at the Arsht Center starting at 8pm. (Ticket information and concert details are below.) Jason has been very generously sharing his insights and time for my ongoing book project. We connected again recently by video call and spent part of the conversation discussing his upcoming visit. That portion — in which Moran discusses Ellington’s importance as a pianist, the relevance of his music to today’s audiences, and teaching through Ellington’s repertoire — is transcribed below.
For those who haven’t heard Moran performing Ellington’s music, here’s a video performance of “Black and Tan Fantasy”…!
Mark Lomanno/The Rhythm of Study (MJL/TRoS): Thanks for your time, Jason. It’s great to reconnect. I’m looking forward to your coming to Miami. You’re gonna be here in about a week. The show that you’re headlining is an Ellington show. Is this a concert that you’ve done before?
Jason Moran (JM): Yeah, I’ve been touring this project for the past year in celebration of his 125th birthday. And it continues. I’ve presented it in a few different forms, mostly as solo concerts or solo with big band. I don’t often work with big bands, but this allows me to meet a lot of new musicians at one time. It also gathers us around a Duke Ellington “text” which I think needs much closer reading. I’m having a lot of fun working with a variety of [students] from high school bands to college bands, next week at the Frost School of Music, and professional bands as well. Ellington pulls no punches. It’s a demanding catalog.
MJL/TRoS: I wanted to ask you about that. I think it’s fair to say that mainstream audiences are aware of Ellington as one of the greatest composers of all time – certainly of the 20th century – across genres. About the repertoire that you’re gonna be performing: beyond just the performance of a canonical composer, what are the messages that Ellington and this music in particular have to share with our contemporary moment? What is it that you want your audiences to engage with?
JM: There are “glass half empty/glass half full” ways to look at all this. If I just deal with Ellington as a pianist, then he modernizes the instrument because his attack defines the place most pianists’ attack will evolve from. I mean, he attacks the piano. And Thelonious Monk’s attack is closely aligned to Ellington’s. So Monk owes half of his paycheck to Ellington. And I think about that frequently because I know that Ellington is really considered a composer, but I think of him as a pianist first and foremost: his ability to charge up the instrument and touch it in a way. He is such an inventive accompanist, as well as an incredible soloist. And even though we don’t have a greater range of solo recordings – given how much he recorded for the big band – his piano playing is superb. And so I dive into that [in this concert]: to think about him as a pianist.
And then, if I think about the ways he writes and why he writes what he writes, he’s not accomplishing any of this stuff alone. And so whether he’s battling his double-consciousness self in the DuBois way or his compatibility with Billy Strayhorn (who is a co-composer on so much work and a person that he goes to see the world with and has another set of eyes looking at the same thing, the same scene) when [those perspectives] come together to try to write it down they find new things together as composers. And Ellington loves an interior perspective, too. I think at a moment in time when Black composers were compelled or forced to write these things to show how jolly life was, Ellington was a composer who was going to show “well, this is also what I’m thinking about” and write songs like “In My Solitude” or “Melancholia” or “Mood Indigo.” He’s preparing another slate for composers. While Louis Armstrong is covering songs — writing a few but doing a lot of covers — Ellington was saying, “we have to write our text, too.” It’s very Frederick Douglass, very Phyllis Wheatley of him to know that about music literacy. And, if I just talk about literacy for a moment, literacy is threatening. Literacy for Black people: [in conditions] where literacy meant death, here is a composer coming out, writing things down on a page that don’t necessarily start with T-H-E – they aren’t words per se – there’s something different. And that’s a challenge. And, believe me, he’s still challenging people. And, I think, this music will always find an audience – just like Shakespeare does – because his themes are timeless.
MJL/TRoS: I’m personally very happy that you’re bringing the project to Miami. I’m still adjusting to life down here, getting up to New York to recharge my batteries as often as I can. So thanks for bringing that energy here. You’re gonna work with the Frost students while you’re here as well, in addition to the concert, right?
JM: That’s right, yeah. They’re playing the concert. So the thing is, I know that, from growing up in an arts high school and going to a music conservatory, some of the greatest gifts happened not necessarily in the classroom but when another musician comes in and plays with you. And you’re in there, making the music with them. There’s no more being a fan. There’s no more being an observer. You have to be creative. And they will challenge you. And sometimes you don’t rise to the challenge but you don’t forget it either. And so I just felt I got so much better when folks like Barry Harris, McCoy Tyner, Dizzy Gillespie, and others came to my high school. I learned so much so quickly when another musician came in and asked us questions about the choices we were making. And Ellington’s music poses a lot of [these questions] technique-wise and attitude-wise. And so I look forward to working with them.
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The concert “Jason Moran Performs the Music of Duke Ellington: My Heart Sings,” part of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County’s Jazz Roots series, will start at 8:00pm on Friday, March 21st, in the Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall. The concert will also feature vocalist Alicia Hall Moran and the Frost Jazz Orchestra from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Tickets start at $40 and can be purchased at this link.
The Rhythm of Study 