Jason Moran presents multimedia meditation on icon James Reese Europe

To describe Jason Moran as simply a skilled jazz pianist in the percussive vein of Duke Ellington or Thelonious Monk is to shortchange the depth and breadth of his work. He is more accurately an artist for whom jazz is the core of his creativity. That is acutely apparent in Moran’s collaborative and multimedia work, which combines his compositions with still or moving visuals — often those of other prominent artists, such as Julie Mehretu and Chicago’s own Theaster Gates.

Moran’s most recent multimedia offering, which comes to Symphony Center on Nov. 22, is a bit different. In addition to being a collaboration with other artists, it’s also a tribute to another artist.

Performed and staged with the help of 10 fellow musicians, the Kenwood Academy High School marching band, cinematographer Bradford Young and artist-filmmaker John Akomfrah, James Reese Europe: From the Dancehall to the Battlefield celebrates the Black composer, activist and World War I hero who led a regimental band (the 369th) called the Harlem Hellfighters.

“I have come from France more firmly convinced than ever that Negroes should write Negro music,” Reese said not long after the Great War had ended. “We have our own racial feeling and if we try to copy whites, we will make bad copies. ...We won France by playing music which was ours and not a pale imitation of others, and if we are to develop in America, we must develop along our own lines.”

A popular performer and composer in his day, and a forefather of jazz, Europe wrote colorful and syncopated music that incorporated ragtime, spirituals and blues in a unique blend of sound and rhythm that significantly influenced the direction and flavor of American music. Having survived the most vicious war then ever waged, he died in 1919 after being stabbed in the neck by one of his band members. "People don’t realize yet today what we lost when we lost Jim Europe," pianist Eubie Blake once said. “He was the savior of Negro musicians in a class with Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King.”

Jason Moran’s multimedia tribute to James Reese Europe evokes a level of emotionality that purely musical performances often don’t.

Moran’s tribute to Europe began as a commission in England (14-18 NOW) to commemorate the centennial of World War I. Moran was part of a group of choreographers, artists, filmmakers and historians invited to creatively consider and interpret various aspects of the war. His choice to highlight the life and work of Europe was rooted in a “very long discussion” he’d had about Europe a few years earlier with the jazz pianist and composer Randy Weston. “I felt like these two moments happening meant that I should really focus on him,” Moran says. “Here was a moment to dive in. But I also knew that because this music was happening at the dawn of recording technology and at the dawn of filmmaking, the audience could see these soldiers when they returned to New York City after the war, rather than just imagining it. We can hear the music while we consider their presence.”

As with all his multimedia programs, Moran says, the Europe one evokes a level of emotionality that purely musical performances often don’t. Even those who’ve never heard of Europe or the Harlem Hellfighters “get overwhelmed with emotion” because the music accentuates the visuals and vice versa. And it’s not only because humans are visual creatures, Moran explains. “Sound is frequency, and the body is unlocked by frequency whether people guard themselves against it or not.”

“By the end of this experience, which is a kind of a meditation, we see moving images of me putting flowers at Europe’s grave. And there’s this long montage of seeing every soldier’s face blown up [in size] onscreen, which then becomes this panorama of people.” All of which drives home the magnitude of their impact. “The piece seems to pull us back together after breaking us apart.”

After all these years of melding sights and sounds, Moran says, his takeaway is that “everything is or can be music.” Moving images, drawings, paintings, dance choreography — it’s all open to interpretation and able to be channeled tonally and melodically, as well as rhythmically.

“I wish my life functioned in a straight line, but it just kind of goes all over,” Moran says. “But these collaborations help me. I’m just thankful to not always be sitting in the same places, making the same things.”