When pianist, bandleader and composer Duke Ellington shed his immortal coil in 1974, he left behind the most voluminous and influential oeuvre in all of jazz, to the tune of more than 1,000 compositions. (For comparison, Thelonious Monk, Ellington’s game-changing successor on the instrument, composed about 70 songs.) Much of Ellington’s material, which defined the swing and big-band eras of jazz, has entered the standard repertoire. But as Jason Moran reminds us, that doesn’t mean it should remain embalmed in the past.
Born a year after Ellington died, Moran, 50, is a piano phenom in his own right—a skateboarder who also attended ballets and symphonies in his youth, and whose omnivorous discography takes inspiration from lyrical and free jazz, ambient music, hip-hop and classical. An ace improviser and sonic deconstructionist by temperament, Moran has released 18 albums as a leader since his acclaimed 1998 Blue Note Records debut, while also scoring movies and appearing as a sideman on countless recordings and tours.
In March, Moran will make a rare Florida appearance for “My Heart Sings,” an all-Ellington revue at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center, alongside the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music Big Band and his wife, vocalist Alicia Hall Moran.
In the searching spirit of jazz, don’t expect the songs to sound exactly as Ellington performed them. “Working with young musicians again is important for me to do, to teach them the malleability of Ellington’s music,” Moran says. “This music is not to be re-created in the way that maybe symphony orchestras often re-create songs from the past. Our music is to be molded to the time.”
What does Duke Ellington mean to you?
Duke Ellington is like Mount Everest, but instead of the top of the mountain being cold, it’s totally lush and full of sun and plant life, meaning he’s got all the right ecology around him. Maybe most importantly is what he means to the piano. He had some really bold and brave ideas, and if it were not for his piano sound, Thelonious Monk would not sound the way he sounded. And I would have probably never fallen in love with music had I not heard Thelonious Monk. So Ellington is like a grandfather who I never got to meet, but I believe in his ability to transform the instrument into an emotional palette.
How do you find new mystery and challenge in his work, even after it’s become so engrained in the jazz vocabulary?
The way I look at him is that time changes, fortunately. And we’re looking at Ellington 125 years after his birth. And lots of things have shifted in the world. Also, some things still remain classic material—I mean from war, and from man’s inhumanity to man. All these things remain intact. Ellington is disgusted by it, and he also finds a way to plant his love for humanity into his band. When I touch those songs, I’m thinking about the ways in which his music hits up against the now. And of course I adapt them, because that’s my nature—one adapts their favorite music to fit their hand. So I’m shifting these songs around to tell a side of the story that I think hits for right now.
Are you sticking to the more familiar songs, or are you unearthing deeper cuts as well?
One thing I’ve done over my recording career is record the more obscure Ellington pieces. So I stick to that. We do play “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing” and “Mood Indigo.” But the rest are songs that struck my backbone to the core. And I try to talk about Ellington as to one degree a simple composer, and to the opposite degree a really complex one. And we try to paint this picture with a selection of songs that shows the full picture.
Ellington represented the era when jazz was populist music, and it was dance music. Jazz today is more niche, maybe more elitist in its audience demographics, and mostly consumed in seats. Can, or should, jazz be a more populist music again?
I think every artist can answer that question differently. Maybe the most important thing is that it should be able to touch people—whether it makes you want to dance, cry, hold hands or run from the room. … I do think there is a relationship that the music should have to the body.
Do you have any projects or albums planned for 2025?
I just woke up this morning, and I’ll say this, because maybe it’ll be out by the time I get to Miami. I was in the shower, and I said, “How dare I not record this music of Ellington’s?” So I might go into the studio and record this really quickly before I get to Miami.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “My Heart Sings: Jason Moran Performs the Music of Duke Ellington”
WHERE: Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
WHEN: March 21, 8 p.m.
COST: $40-$130
CONTACT: 305/949-6722, arshtcenter.org
This article is from the March 2025 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
