Jazz in the Key of Ellison

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, singers Catherine Russell, Angélique Kidjo and Patti Austin and music director Andy Farber and His Orchestra perform in a words-and-music tribute to great American novelist Ralph Ellison and his remarkable jazz collection. Special guest readers include actor Joe Morton, hip-hop artist Talib Kweli, Don Katz and Robert O’Meally.

An evening of great entertainment is in store when renowned instrumentalists, singers and speakers gather to salute the musical life of the great American novelist Ralph Ellison.

Ellison’s life was filled with music. To celebrate that joyous personal side of Ellison, NJPAC presents Jazz in the Key of Ellison, a special evening of live music inspired by the Harlem jazz world that Ellison loved and knew so well, along with live readings from his writing on music.

Introduced by Audible, Inc. founder and CEO Donald Katz, who was taught and mentored by Ellison, this program of great jazz entertainment, centered on the musical life of one of America’s most influential writers, is supported by Audible.com, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and the Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark.

Ellison (1913-1994) built a superb record collection to enjoy while he wrote his seminal work, Invisible Man. A music writer as well, his Living with Music is a collection of his explorations of jazz. Ellison’s favorite music included many artists he saw perform live, such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Rushing and Bessie Smith, along with next-generation greats including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk.

Ralph Ellison’s understanding of the power of the oral tradition and his ability to hear the music in well-wrought arrangements of spoken words informed the vision and mission of Audible from the beginning. Ellison was the teacher and mentor of Audible’s founder. According to Ellison, the way the early American vernacular embraced storytelling around campfires, the braggadocio of our salesmanship, and the sound of our lamenting in the fields became the distinctive voice that defined American novels and our singularly “conscious and conscientious” culture, a culture that created itself “out of whatever it found useful.” Ellison loved the melodies in language and he told stories in a voice that sounded like a coal car coming out of a mine. He loved enormous cigars, jazz, and ideas. In many ways, Audible exists to honor his legacy.

Presented by Audible

Sponsored by the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers-Newark