Black, Brown and Beige, the jewel of Duke Ellington’s extended jazz compositions, “is probably less heard [than] any musical work of comparable reputation,” wrote critic Gary Giddins in his 1977 treatise “In Search of Black, Brown and Beige.” But, he added, it wouldn’t realize its potential “until a conductor with as intransigent a vision as Ellington’s is commissioned to prepare [it] for performance.… So far, no one from the jazz or symphonic worlds has measured up.”
Those words represented a challenge for composer/arranger Randall Keith Horton, who had worked in 1973-74 as Ellington’s composing and conducting assistant (and later orchestrated and conducted his sacred music at the behest of Ellington’s sister Ruth). A colleague read that Mr. Giddins is in search of,’” recalls Horton, now 79. “He said, ‘How do I go about getting you to do that?’”
