Out Chorus

Jazz composition exerted a strong influence on draftsman, painter, watercolorist, and collagist Romare Bearden. The jazz pioneer Duke Ellington (1899–1974), who was a close family friend, purchased one of Bearden’s paintings from his first exhibition, and Bearden in turn experimented with jazz composition, writing a popular tune, “Seabreeze,” in the early 1950s. The American artist Stuart Davis, with whom Bearden listened for hours to the music of jazz pianist Earl Hines (1903–1983), urged Bearden to apply ideas from what he heard to his own art: “Listen to what he isn’t playing. What you don’t need is just as important as what you do need.” Out Chorus takes its name from the act of returning to the main melody after a section of improvisation, evoking the varied pace and rhythms of the musical genre.