In 1943 the African-American journalist Vincent Lushington "Roi" Ottley (1906-1960) published New World A-Coming: Inside Black America, the first of his six books, in which he envisioned improved conditions for blacks in postwar America: "...a new world is a-coming with the sweep and fury of the Resurrection." In his 1973 autobiography Music Is My Mistress, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (born 29 April 1899, Washington, D.C.; died 24 May 1974, New York) explains that he composed New World a-Comin' in 1943 during his band's four-week engagement in New York "at the Capitol on Fifty-first and Broadway with Lena Horne as co-star. The title was suggested by Roi Ottley's best-selling book of the same name…It was premièred at Carnegie Hall on 11 December 1943…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. Later, the work was orchestrated for performance by the symphony, and I always remember that even Don Shirley, a pianist with prodigious technique, had trouble with a ragtime 'lick' for the left hand."

At the première, Ellington performed New World a-Comin' as piano soloist with his fifteen-piece band. In the 1960s, it was revived in an arrangement for piano solo and symphony orchestra that departed considerably from the original version. In spring 1983, Duke Ellington's son Mercer asked Maurice Peress to reconstruct the original version for piano solo and jazz band. Since Duke Ellington had never written down the piano part, and the 1943 and 1960s scores and parts were lost, Peress worked entirely from a recording of the 1943 Carnegie Hall concert, producing an edition that was performed in the summer of 1983 at the Kool Jazz Festival. Subsequently, Peress expanded the arrangement for full symphony orchestra, precisely following the jazz band arrangement and including his written-out version of Ellington's solo piano part as played at the première. On the recording that Peress conducted in 1988 with the American Composers Orchestra and Sir Roland Hanna as piano soloist, Hanna improvised the final cadenza.

Writer: Paul Phillips