Jason Moran: 2

For Part 2 of our post on Jason Moran, here is a more polished and professional presentation of the musician's performance of Black and Tan Fantasy as a precursor to a piece which appeared in The New York Times on Jason Moran's Ellington In Focus.

From The New York Times, no copyright infringement intended...

Jason Moran Unpacks Duke Ellington’s Greatness in a Single Song

Watch as the pianist distills the “joyful tragedy” of Black and Tan Fantasy into a stirring solo piece.

By Hank Shteamer

23 April, 2025

Jason Moran has spent the past year living with the music of Duke Ellington, playing a series of concerts honouring the 125th anniversary of the great pianist, composer and bandleader’s birth. For Moran, a forward-thinking pianist with a deep historical grounding, the experience has only deepened his appreciation for Ellington’s greatness. “This music for me still feels so vital,” he said. “It unlocks a lot of keys.”

Earlier this month, Moran took some time at the Apollo Theatre — where he would perform a spellbinding Ellington-themed solo concert the following night — and reflected on what he called the “knotty nature” of Ellington’s works, highlighting the way they lean into emotional complexity.

Moran broke down one of the staples of his tribute shows, Black and Tan Fantasy, an early Ellington masterpiece written with the trumpeter Bubber Miley.

A black-and-white photo of a man in a white suit playing a piano with a small orchestra standing and playing instruments around him.

Ellington recorded Black and Tan Fantasy several times in 1927 with a small orchestra, showing off the ensemble’s tightly honed, potently expressive sound. Moran converted it into a solo, which he called “one of the great things to do — to reduce something down to its essence.”

This is Black and Tan Fantasy.

Moran’s solo version skilfully translates the rich group texture of the original to the keys.

Moran has a lengthy history of paying homage to his heroes in creative ways, whether staging what he and the bassist-vocalist Meshell Ndegeocello called their Fats Waller Dance Party or presenting imaginative staged programs themed around the lives and times of the pianist Thelonious Monk and the ragtime pioneer James Reese Europe.

His take on Black and Tan Fantasy shows how he both honours and expands on the works he interprets.

A JOYFUL TRAGEDY

Ellington’s own Black and Tan Fantasy shows his ability to convey a wide range of moods in a brief span of time. For Moran, the composition evokes a feeling of what he called “joyful tragedy.” He likens the piece’s opening section to a funeral procession.

"I think Black and Tan Fantasy has two major moments.There’s this kind of blues that’s the first side.The second side is this, you know, this pivot point. So there’s this part that’s ...Like this, minor blues ... and then, you know, it’s a joyful tragedy."

One of the most striking features of Moran’s interpretation is when he leans into the piano’s low register, building up a swell of percussive texture. He demonstrates the technique here.

"There are times when I’m playing Black and Tan Fantasy,I’ll take that initial rhythm and then I’ll sink it lower and lower and lower into the piano, until you can’t really quite hear it anymore, but you start to feel something different. So that rhythm is like this ..."

Moran said that, as a pianist, Ellington was “unafraid to make that instrument rumble.” Accordingly, in his own version, Moran was aiming for something “deep, dark and layered and explosive.”

THEN … A CELEBRATION

Moran relishes the way the mood of the piece lifts about halfway through, when Ellington takes the lead with a whimsical piano theme. If the opening section suggests mourning, this moment, Moran said, brings to mind a dance “where you celebrate that person’s life.”

The light side shows up in this dance moment,

especially in this section that goes ...Right? There’s something about that right hand ..."

Moran’s interpretation leans into the word “fantasy” in the title of the piece, playing up its dreamlike aura.

"See it goes back and forth.Ellington wants us to have more than one side of ourselves.The true double consciousness."

For Moran, the feeling of tension that’s inherent in a work like Black and Tan Fantasy carries with it a lesson for the listener. Ellington, he said, “wants us to have more than one side of ourselves.”

“He’s able to take us to the darkness and to the light,” Moran added. “He really is in both spaces frequently.”

As he’s reckoned with Ellington’s music against the backdrop of what he described as a “weird” and unsettling time in history, Moran said he has found solace in Ellington’s mingling of darkness and light: “I couldn’t ask for a better companion.”