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Jason Moran Spent Six Years Preparing to Play Ellington Alone

There is no “Take the A Train” on the solo album. There is a 13-minute “Black and Tan Fantasy,” a low-register storm, and a book Moran wants to hear every night.

At Harlem’s Apollo Theater in April 2025, Jason Moran began “Black and Tan Fantasy” inside Duke Ellington’s familiar frame, then allowed the metre to disintegrate. For more than two minutes, he worked the piano’s lowest keys into an atonal roar. The audience whooped in disbelief. Moran eventually returned to the piece as if the weather had cleared. This was not a polite tribute. It was the sound of a musician knowing the building well enough to move a wall.

Moran spent six years approaching the album that followed. Released in February 2026, Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington contains 12 solo performances recorded at the Bridge Studio in Brooklyn. “Black and Tan Fantasy” runs for 13 minutes and 14 seconds, the record’s longest stretch. Ellington supplies most of the book; Billy Strayhorn wrote “Lotus Blossom,” while Moran adds “Means” and folds his own “South Side Digging” into a medley with “Wig Wise.” The archive has not been sealed.

His route to Ellington did not begin as a scholarly duty. At 13, Moran heard Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight” in his parents’ record collection. In high school, another line of descent appeared on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers): “Shame on a Nigga” samples Monk playing Ellington’s “Black and Tan Fantasy.” A 1920s composition reached a teenage pianist through a 1950s performance and a 1990s hip-hop record. The dates line up neatly. The music refuses to.

That trail explains why Moran does not attempt to restore a pure Ellington. “Black and Tan Fantasy” already lives among different hands, records and samples; the solo version adds another date to the chain. Its low-register storm is not rebellion pasted onto a standard. The missing theme remains the listener’s measuring device, present in memory even while the piano seems to have left it behind.

Moran kept the repertoire deliberately narrow. He chose the pieces he wanted to hear every night: “Melancholia,” “Reflections in D,” “Lotus Blossom,” “Wig Wise.” He had learned “Single Petal of a Rose” in high school, well before it became one of the closing pieces in this project. “Take the A Train” is absent. Fame is not the organising principle here; return is. A tune earns its place because the pianist still wants to sit down with its harmony tomorrow.

The choice also changes Ellington’s scale. A bandleader is reduced to one instrument, leaving orchestral colour to ten fingers, the pedals and the silence between phrases. At the Apollo, some performances began with the economy of Ellington’s own solo recordings before Moran disturbed them with syncopation, running figures or the weight of the bass register. He does not need to announce that the old music is relevant. Its resilience gives him permission to treat it as present tense.

The album ends with “I Like the Sunrise,” but the concert story often leaves its final image to “Single Petal of a Rose,” the piece Moran has carried since school. After six years of preparation and 13 minutes inside “Black and Tan Fantasy,” he returns not to the most famous standard but to the melody longest held in his own hands. The storm passes. One piano remains, along with a narrow book that proved wide enough for the entire journey.