Jason Moran heads to Berklee for a solo showcase honoring Duke Ellington

Boston Globe

27-02-2025

Moran, who is also an accomplished composer, bandleader, educator, and 2010 MacArthur Foundation 'genius grant' recipient, has previously honored other heroes: Thelonious Monk, Fats Waller, and, most recently,
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'I took a walk through the Muir Woods in the Bay Area,' he explains. 'One of the things they showcase is how to preserve the forest. They do this by preserving the understory of the forest.'
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Moran seeks to do likewise with Ellington and those other historical figures he's built performances around, so that 'we continue to tend to those roots,' as he puts it. 'That's why I've devoted myself to these projects where I just devote myself to somebody's catalog for a while.'
The Kennedy Center show was touted as Moran's 'solo climb up 'Mount Ellington,'' but there's a more personal reason for Moran's decision to focus on Ellington. Moran often acknowledges Thelonius Monk as his musical lodestar, calling him his own 'big bang moment.' Monk's own lodestar was Ellington.
'The way Ellington attacks the piano — [Monk] learns that attack directly from Ellington,' Moran says. 'It's just a very distinct touch that almost pulls notes from the piano. And Ellington, though he's so graceful in his image, we sometimes underestimate how much edge and precision he's slicing into the piano key.'
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Two Ellington compositions with special resonance to Moran date back to his high school days. One is tied to his interest in hip-hop, and the first
'Here we have a new band from the 1990s sampling Monk from the 1950s playing Ellington from the 1920s,' Moran says. 'Ellington was showing up everywhere. We have him to cherish, because he kept laying something into the music that would always be timeless.'
The other special piece is from the Ellington album 'The Queen's Suite,' recorded as a gift to Queen Elizabeth of England and released posthumously in 1991.
''Single Petal of a Rose' is maybe my prize,' Moran says. 'It's probably the first Ellington song that I learned when I was in high school that was outside of the standards that you would play on jazz gigs when you're first learning songs, like 'Take the A Train,' 'Satin Doll.''
Both pieces show up in Moran's solo sets.
'I keep the repertoire quite narrow,' he says. ''What are the ones that I want to hear every night?''
Among the other pieces that make up his set list in these solo shows are compositions that Ellington recorded solo ('Melancholia,' 'Reflections in D,' et al). These include Billy Strayhorn's 'Lotus Blossom,' which allows Moran to tell his audiences about the Strayhorn-Ellington connection. Moran will also revisit a piece he recorded on the debut album with his Bandwagon trio: 'Wig Wise,' which Ellington recorded on 'Money Jungle' with Charles Mingus and Max Roach.
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Moran has also been a New England Conservatory faculty member since 2010, and has a long history of playing with his students when he performs with a big band. He'll oversee another student concert on March 6, this one focused on boogie-woogie pieces by the likes of Mary Lou Williams and Count Basie. 'I always use NEC as a kind of a lab, to try some of the ideas out,' says Moran, who featured Ellington in last year's concert. 'It's an ongoing relationship, and these students know that I'm testing material on them.'
Dean, a 2019 NEC graduate, sang with Moran and other students at a 2018 residency concert featuring music by Moran's wife,
'He says it's like breaking down the fourth wall,' she recalls. '[Audiences] are always invited into this experience beyond just the history. It's like experiencing this whole world and this time continuum.'
Sometimes the experience is felt more bodily by the audience than consciously. And that, says Moran, is Ellington's doing.
'On the piano, it is a feeling that he pulls in the room. He's not just composing a song; he's making a set of frequencies that changes people's chemistry,' Moran explains. 'He's not doing just a song for you to snap your fingers to or dance to or listen to in the background on the elevator. He's making a song that'll change your body, and he's writing it down and passing it on to others. It's one of his most important characteristics for me.'
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JASON MORAN 'DUKE ELLINGTON: MY HEART SINGS'
At Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, March 1, 8 p.m. $39 to $109.
JASON MORAN RESIDENCY CONCERT
At Williams Hall, New England Conservatory, 30 Gainsborough St., Boston, March 6, 8 p.m. Free.