Cincinnati Pops’ ‘Harlem Renaissance’ album honors period’s lasting legacy

The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra is honoring the lasting legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, bringing its music, culture and spirit vividly into the present with a new album. 

The Pops has announced the release of “Harlem Renaissance,” its newest recording led by conductor John Morris Russell. The album pays tribute to one of America’s most influential artistic movements and the wide range of jazz styles it inspired, pairing iconic compositions with fresh interpretations, including a first commercial recording.

At the center of the project is piano virtuoso Marcus Roberts, one of America’s leading jazz pianists. He has recorded more than 30 acclaimed albums – solo, trio, big band, and symphony – including “Portraits in Blue,” the first to showcase jazz improvisation in a classical setting. Roberts, a professor of jazz piano at Florida State University, continues to explore new ways to fuse jazz and classical music.

For “Harlem Renaissance,” Roberts performs his own arrangement of James P. Johnson’s 1927 piano rhapsody “Yamekraw.” Inspired by the music and culture of Savannah, Georgia’s historically Black neighborhoods in the 1920s, the piece becomes, in Roberts’ hands, a “living conversation between Johnson’s original score and the jazz traditions that followed,” according to Russell.

This album also features the jazz tone poem “Harlem” by Duke Ellington, an evocative portrait of Manhattan’s legendary neighborhood. It includes the first commercial release of “Hellfighters’ Blues” by Carlos Simon, a 2024 composition inspired by World War I bandleader James Reese Europe’s 1919 recording of W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues.”

“Harlem Renaissance honors extraordinary Black composers and their kindred spirits – painters, poets, authors, sculptors and dancers – who together defined the ethos of 20th century American culture,” said Russell.

Bringing history to life through music

A graduate of Williams College and the University of Southern California, Russell joined the Cincinnati Pops in September 2011 and has since shaped a recording catalog focused on American musical traditions. 

“Harlem Renaissance” is Russell’s eighth album with the orchestra, continuing a run of recordings that explore American musical traditions. Earlier projects include “American Originals,” the Grammy-nominated “American Originals: 1918,” “Voyage” and the 2023 holiday release “Joy!”

For the new album, Russell said the Pops approached the repertoire as a living tradition, presenting these significant African American works “not as museum-pieces but part of a continuum of style that continues to evolve a century later.”

Vocal selections help round out the program, with songs by Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes, along with music by Moisés Simons and Cab Calloway. Vocalists Mykal Kilgore and Tatiana Mayfield appear in orchestral arrangements by Rob Mounsey that span a wide range of jazz styles.

“The album captures the nuance, power and virtuosity of the Cincinnati Pops, the thrilling and breathtaking improvisations of the Modern Jazz Generation and the sheer brilliance of Marcus Roberts and his trio,” Russell said.

Seven-time Grammy Award-winning producer Elaine Martone, recently inducted into the Resonator Hall of Fame, produced the album, continuing her longtime collaboration with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops. The recording is released by Fanfare Cincinnati, the orchestras’ in-house label.

Three tracks are being released in advance of the full album: Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” on Feb. 13, followed by “The Mooche” on Feb. 20 and Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” on Feb. 27. The complete “Harlem Renaissance” album arrives March 13 on major streaming platforms.

“It was an absolute joy to perform these concerts live, and a delight to now share it with the world,” Russell said.