Jason Moran at The Apollo Theater

Jason Moran
Apollo Theater
"Ellington in Focus"
New York, NY
April 11, 2025

The works of jazz's greatest composer, played brilliantly by a current master, alone at a concert grand piano. Jason Moran's solo tribute to Duke Ellington last Friday could have triumphed on any stage or in any context.

"Ellington in Focus" gained special resonance, though, with the presence at the event of two other cultural touchstones. Looming over Moran as he played were photos of Ellington by Gordon Parks, the greatest African-American photographer. And the setting was The Apollo Theater, the hallowed Harlem performance space where Duke performed many times.

Moran's 90-minute program favored ballads, many of them recorded by Ellington himself in solo versions. The pieces sometimes adopted the spare, near-minimalist style of Duke's solo recordings, at least as they began. Some retained that simplicity to the end—as in the exquisitely unadorned "Single Petal of a Rose" that closed the program.

Often as not, though, Moran's virtuosity and avant inclinations—he's recorded with the likes of Sam Rivers and Oliver Lake, after all—eventually upended Ellingtonian restraint to make the pieces very much his own. Moran embellished the set opener, "Reflections in D," with syncopations and rippling runs, ornamentations that Ellington rarely flashed in his economic solo performances.

Most audacious was Moran's take on "Black and Tan Fantasy." Midway through, the delicate composition—written for Ellington and orchestra—began to lose its original shape and meter, eventually devolving into a continuous atonal rumble, played on the piano's lowest keys. The thunderous roar lasted so long—more than two minutes—as to elicit whoops of surprised disbelief from the audience. Moran then returned to the Fantasy as though a noisy storm had quickly cleared.

The black-and-white photos—shot by Parks during a 1960 tour by Ellington and orchestra—were anything but a distraction. Rather, the images were carefully tailored to the music they accompanied. Most striking—and moving—was the photo of Duke at a dimly lit table, head in his hands, that appeared as Moran played a forlorn "Melancholia," the title a bygone term for depression, which Ellington is said to have suffered at points in his life. During a gorgeous "Lotus Blossom" slow zooms brought images of its co-composers, Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, progressively closer to us, until the duo appeared on each side of Moran as he played, like spirits looming over the music.

Speaking of spirits, Moran evoked those of the Apollo and its environs soon after entering at stage right and rubbing the fabled stump of an elm tree—long a good-luck gesture at the theater. His opening remarks were an uptown celebration unto themselves. After a boisterous greeting of "Hello Harlem!," the Houston native riffed on how much he loved to live and work in his adopted neighborhood, inspired by "the piano giants who walked these streets"—not only Duke, he said, but Fats Waller, James P. Johnson and Mary Lou Williams.

The Apollo show was a reprise of the world-premiere "Ellington in Focus," presented last April in Washington D.C. The Kennedy Center event was undoubtedly prestigious. Yet it's hard to imagine it matched the unique thrill of seeing this program in a location with such deep resonance for Ellington and Moran—and for American culture, period.

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