25/26 JAZZ SERIES
JASON MORAN AND THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS
JAMES REESE EUROPE AND THE ABSENCE OF RUIN
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2026 | 7:30 PM
SHANNON HALL AT MEMORIAL UNION
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PROGRAM NOTES
Composer, pianist, and visual artist Jason Moran reflects on the legacy of a hero of Black music in a multidisciplinary program entitled James Reese Europe and the Harlem Hellfighters: The Absence of Ruin. An iconic figure in the evolution of AfricanAmerican music, a ragtime pioneer, and a World War I hero, James Reese Europe led a crack military ensemble called the Harlem Hellfighters. In addition to their achievements in combat, Europe and his Hellfighters popularized the new spirit of jazz in a war-torn French nation fascinated with Black culture. And that’s only the beginning of their story: Their legacy has had an extraordinary impact on African-American music over the past century of cultural and political change.
Moran’s innovative program features his Bandwagon bandmates—bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits—plus a seven-piece horn section, contributions from artist/ writer/director/screenwriter John Akomfrah, and visual materials from acclaimed cinematographer Bradford Young. It’s Moran’s response to writer Orlando Patterson’s concept of the “absence of ruin” (the material lack, particularly for Black Americans and ethnic groups subjected to colonialism, of robust physical evidence of their cultural memory and identity) and serves as a musical monument to a vanishing African-American history. Of the US premiere, The Washington Post wrote, “We already know that Jason Moran is stunningly and profoundly original, even in his treatment of existing material … Knowing it doesn’t prepare one for the stark, sublime beauty of James Reese Europe and the Harlem Hellfighters: The Absence of Ruin.”
James Reese Europe and the Absence of Ruin was co-commissioned by 1418 NOW: WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Berliner Festspiele / Jazzfest Berlin, Serious and the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, with support from the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund, from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and from the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Germany.
ARTIST STATEMENT
There is great beauty in the life of Lieutenant James Reese Europe. Within the scholarship of his life and music, it becomes clear that the history surrounding him is a complex and tightly woven knot. Each strand of the cord holds a uniquely American history, a history that also births another complex knot: JAZZ.
Europe becomes a freedom fighter. His childhood violin teacher is the son of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and he learns at an early age that sound and freedom aid one another. With his violin, he arrives in New York on a mission. Much of this mission revolves around music, but his greater mission will be demanding equality for AfricanAmerican performers—PEOPLE. He finds fame by producing music for many societies: dances, parties, ceremonies, and concerts. In 1910 he forms the groundbreaking Clef Club, a union for African-American musicians. His 1911 standingroom-only Carnegie Hall premiere of the Clef Club Orchestra is a sensation. His work developing dance music with the famous dancing duo Vernon and Irene Castle innovates fox trot tempos and other dance steps. With each of these developments, Europe always finds a larger stage. The “stage” will always be a portal to a place to test what is real and surreal.
In World War I, he found his largest and most dangerous stage. When he joined the New York’s 15th Regiment, which would later become the 369th Infantry Harlem Hellfighters, he knew African-American soldiers could not fight alongside white soldiers. His writing partner Noble Sissle was shocked that Europe signed up. Sissle asked Europe, if he could get out of the war, would he? Europe replied, “If I could, I would not. My country called me, and I must answer. And if I live to come back, I will startle the world with my music.”
He indeed startled the world. A hundred years later, we celebrate a brave individual among a company of soldiers, the Harlem Hellfighters, who predicted a thought Martin Luther King Jr. would write some 47 years later in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Hear We Are.
—Jason Moran
ARTIST BIO
Pianist, composer, and artist
Jason Moran is the artistic director for jazz at The Kennedy Center. He has released 18 solo recordings with Blue Note Records and Yes Records. He curated the permanent exhibition Here to Stay for the newly opened Louis Armstrong Center in Queens, New York, and has co-curated the exhibition I’ve Seen the Wall: Louis Armstrong on Tour in the GDR 1965 at Das Minsk Kunsthaus in Potsdam, Germany. In 2022, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded the 2023 German Jazz Prize for Pianist of the Year. His latest recording, From the Dancehall to the Battlefield, is devoted to the music of World War I jazz pioneer and organizer James Reese Europe, the “Big Bang” of jazz.
Jason Moran has collaborated with a number of contemporary artists, such as Joan Jonas, Kara Walker, Stan Douglas, Theaster Gates, and Remy Jungerman.
Cinematographer
Film Editor
Bradford Young
Saintonge
Color Correction Harbor Picture Company
Dramaturg
Historian
Stephany Neal
Still Photography Jati Lindsay
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