INTERVIEW: Darius de Haas on keeping the legacy of Billy Strayhorn alive

Photo: Darius de Haas portrays jazz composer Billy Strayhorn in a new musical at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by press agent with permission.

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For jazz aficionados, the name Billy Strayhorn should be known, respected and celebrated. He was the composer of a great many jazz standards, including “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Something to Live For” and “Lush Life,” among many, many others. As a member of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, he was a frequent presence in the jazz world until his death — far too soon — in 1967 at the age of 51. His numerous talents graced the stages of the world, including Carnegie Hall, and he dedicated his life to civil rights and social justice.

The obstacles he faced as an openly gay Black man are sometimes not known to jazz fans who have been listening to his music for years. But a new musical, entitled Billy Strayhorn: Something to Live For, is currently broadening the number of people who know this exquisite composer and also filling in some of the necessary information on his personal life and influential legacy. At the center of the new show, which is currently running through Oct. 11 at the Pittsburgh Public Theater, is Darius de Haas, star of stage and screen, who plays Strayhorn. He is surrounded by a talented ensemble of actors and well-known creative team members. For example, Billy Porter serves as a producer.

“I went in for the creative team earlier this year,” de Haas said about his addition to the cast. “I am friends with Alyce Claerbaut, who is Billy Strayhorn’s niece and who co-runs his estate, but that said, I really, really didn’t have any idea that I would be part of the show until a few months before. So it really has been a bit of a whirlwind.”

De Haas, who has appeared on Broadway in everything from Rent to Shuffle Along, has had a lifelong fascination and love of Strayhorn’s musical output. The actor comes from a musical family. His father is a jazz bassist, and his mother is a singer. In fact, his mother, uncle and aunt sang as a trio at one point in their careers.

“So I’ve always been exposed and in the world of music and in jazz,” he said. “Then a number of years later, I was doing a show on Broadway, and I just had a little epiphany for myself: I want to expand my artistic palette. And I really want to go into concert work, not stop theater or acting or anything like that, just expand my palette. It was suggested to me that I concentrate on one person, and so I had been reading the biography of Billy Strayhorn, Lush Life, written by David Hajdu.”

De Haas knew of Strayhorn’s songbook already, but when he coupled the memories of those songs with this biography of the artist, he started to sit and ruminate about this mid-20th century life and legacy. The actor was struck by the fact that even though Strayhorn wrote some of the greatest music this country has ever heard, his name was not more widely known to the general public.

“So I had the opportunity to create a concert for the Lincoln Center American Songbook series,” said de Haas, who was a series regular on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. “I did a couple concerts for them there, and then from that I had a three-week run at a lovely club room in New York called Archie’s. And then through having done some recordings — some cast recordings and concept recordings — my friend, Tommy Krasker, said, ‘You know what, we’re going to record a Strayhorn album, and you’re going to do it.’ So I was able to record a Strayhorn album, and this was over 20 years ago. It’s been with me on and off for many, many years. It has sort of been my touchstone, so to speak.”

This musical has allowed de Haas to dive deeper into the compositional history of Strayhorn as a jazz artist. Helping the actor with his understanding of Strayhorn are Kent Gash, director and co-author of the show; Rob Zeller, co-author; and Matthew Whitaker, the musical director who leads a nine-piece jazz band for the show. Together they have pieced together the biography of this stellar musician.

“He didn’t have the resources and wasn’t allowed to really study at the conservatories because of racism,” de Haas said. “Black people didn’t have that opportunity, so he was classically trained. But also he was very drawn to musical theater. He always loved musical theater. He wrote a show called Fantastic Rhythm, which you’ll see an idealized snippet of it in the show, where he wrote the song called ‘A Penthouse on Shady Avenue,’ and it’s very much in that vein of a nice, little, sweet musical theater song. But then he eventually leaned more into jazz, but he was able to incorporate many elements. There is a theatricality. There is a very deep open, sometimes very impressionistic, very sensitive thrust to his writing. So in the musical … we’re inviting all kinds of elements.”

De Haas added: “It’s of utmost importance to tell the story here and now. … In terms of who Billy Strayhorn was: He was an out gay Black man working in arguably one of the greatest orchestras of the 20th century, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, who made the choice to be who he was. That is an anomaly, particularly in the Golden Age. We have a thing in this country where we want to not deal with certain things in history or brush over them. He wrote ‘Take the ‘A’ Train’, let’s take that and sort of scuttle away all that other stuff; that’s not important. But what is important, along with him writing some of the greatest music, is how he moved through this country, and that is a story that I think will inspire not just gay people, not just Black people, but all people, anyone who has aspirations, who come from humble beginnings.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Billy Strayhorn: Something to Live For, starring Darius de Haas, runs through Oct. 11 at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. Click here for more information and tickets.