Duke Ellington premieres Black, Brown and Beige at Carnegie Hall

Duke Ellington performed his extended suite Black, Brown and Beige at his Carnegie Hall debut on January 23, 1943. A 45-minute tone poem tracing the history of African Americans from slavery through the present, it was jazz's most ambitious attempt to date to claim the concert hall as a space for Black musical expression. The performance established Ellington as a serious compositional voice.