DESCRIPTION:
(from the liner notes by Maurice Peress)

On December 11. 1943, for the second time, Ellington brought his orchestra to Carnegie Hall and presented a "twelve-minute piece" (actually it is closer to 15) for piano solo and jazz band. Ellington describes the work in his autobiography "Music is My Mistress":

"The title was suggested by Roi Otterley's best-selling book of the same name. Otterley looked forward to better conditions for the Negro following World War II...A New World is A-Coming with the sweep and fury of the Resurrection...I visualized this new world as a place in the distant future, where there would be no war, no greed, no categorization, no non-believers, where love was unconditional, and no pronoun was good enough for God."

In the 1960's the work appeared in a new, much-changed version for piano solo and symphony orchestra, parts and score for which are lost. There never existed a solo piano part, except in Ellington's head. In the spring of 1983, Peress was approached by Mercer Ellington to reconstruct the original version for piano solo and jazz band, which I did from a recording of the 1943 Carnegie Hall concert, including the actual solo part as played by Ellington. This was presented at the Kool Jazz Festival that summer. The symphonic orchestration on this recording follows this version exactly and, most importantly, includes Ellington's original virtuoso solo piano part. The final cadenza was improvised in the studio by Sir Roland Hanna in keeping with two grand traditions, the 18th- and 19th-century practice of composer/soloists and virtuosi when playing concerti, and the 20th century practice by jazz masters such as Ellington and Hanna.