All aboard the A Train! This Sunday, Jazz at Lincoln Center will celebrate the centennial of jazz great Billy Strayhorn with a series of performances — including a surprise pop-up concert on the subway that inspired Strayhorn’s most famous composition, “Take the A Train.”
The MTA will unearth an era-appropriate subway train to run on the A line for the occasion. The train’s passengers will be serenaded by the Donald Malloy Quartet and the Evan Sherman Entourage playing a medley of Strayhorn compositions, including “Take the A Train”. (Time and location of the concert will not be announced because of concerns about crowding.)
“We celebrate the centennial of Mr. Strayhorn by saluting one of the most meaningful compositions in the jazz canon, as we also salute our public transit system,” Wynton Marsalis, the trumpeter and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, said in a statement.
The celebration is a collaboration between Jazz at Lincoln Center, MTA Music and the New York Transit Museum. Mr. Marsalis played “Take the A Train” on the subway in 1999 during the centennial of Duke Ellington, Strayhorn’s frequent collaborator.
Ellington and Strayhorn worked together on compositions and arrangements through the 1950s, with Ellington’s band popularized many Strayhorn tunes, including “Lush Life.” Strayhorn died in 1967.
Concerts celebrating Strayhorn will follow on Sunday evening at 7:30 and 9:30 at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. Gale A. Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, will be present to officially proclaim Nov. 29 as “Billy Strayhorn Day.” A livestream of the event will be available at jazz.org/live.