Thelonious Monk, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington – when Jason Moran plays, the hall is filled with the legends of jazz history. On his latest album, »Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington«, Moran approaches the ‘Duke’ primarily as a pianist. »Duke’s music is too important to simply play,« says Moran of the great Duke Ellington. »I’ve been studying him throughout my entire career in order to do him justice.«
As early as 2024, Moran won the hearts of the audience with the hr Big Band and a Duke Ellington programme. »Jazz to lose yourself in,« wrote the Hamburger Abendblatt enthusiastically. Now he continues on this path alone at the piano, interpreting Ellington’s classics in his own way: in his version of the famous »Black and Tan Fantasy«, Moran builds to a veritable frenzy, interspersing the original motifs with dark, rumbling accents.
»The piano is a machine. He has found a way to give this machine a soul and to tell stories about the people he has met.« The Houston-born American continues these stories in every concert. He constantly discovers new facets in the familiar pieces and brings them into the present: »I like to imagine Ellington as someone who is always striving towards the future.«
PERFORMERS
Jason Moran piano
