Coventry Carolling

Cathedral of Culture

An event celebrating the cultural history of Coventry Cathedral featuring a newly restored recording of Celebration, the television programme of Duke Ellington’s 1966 performance in the Cathedral.

This evening of archive television showcases the important role that Coventry Cathedral has played in the arts and culture, locally, nationally and internationally. At its centre, the event will feature the first showing since February 1966 of Duke Ellington and his Orchestra performing the European premiere of their First Concert of Sacred Music at Coventry Cathedral. This extraordinary conjunction of secular music in a sacred setting was broadcast by ITV on the Midlands ABC channel as part of their Easter programming, under the title Celebration. In the half century since, this recording was presumed lost and forgotten in the history of jazz television. Its rediscovery in the Studiocanal archive and subsequent digital restoration by the archive television company Kaleidoscope with generous support from the University of Warwick offers us an unmissable opportunity to see Ellington play in Coventry once more. We hope to invite some special guests to speak at this event; the evening will also feature other archive programming of music, dance, drama and art in the Cathedral – more details to follow.

Interviewed about the Coventry concert, Ellington said, “It’s one of the most satisfying things I have ever done. And the most important.” 

This event is the fourth part of a series of events or ‘hauntings’ in the ongoing project Ghost Town: Civic Television and the Haunting of Coventry (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/ghosttown/). The project takes programmes made in and about the city out of the television archive and re-screens them around the city in expected and unexpected places

Doors open at 6pm

Screening starts at 6:30pm

Tickets are free and are available here.