Launching Pad

 

Very exciting news as we are pleased to announce that the Tony Faulkner Archive of Ellington/ Strayhorn transcriptions has been received by Birmingham City University where the collection will be housed as part of the Duke Ellington Society UK Archive.

Pictured is Dr Pedro Cravinho, Senior Research Fellow in Ethnomusicology and Jazz Studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and the Academic Lead for the Arts, Design & Media Archive at Birmingham City University. Dr Cravinho was a key person in ensuring the Faulkner Archive came to Birmingham City University.

Tony Faulkner is a highly regarded composer, drummer, arranger and educator. He  enjoyed a long career as a Jazz educator, principally as a tutor at the Leeds College of Music, and has helped many of the finest British Jazz musicians of the last 35 years hone their compositional, performance and ensemble skills.

When Tony retired from Leeds College of Music, he graciously donated his considerable library of manuscripts, arrangements and transcriptions to the Duke Ellington Society UK. The library was entrusted to DESUK member Mike Fletcher who runs the Kinda Dukish big band in Birmingham. Mike curated the collection for a number of years, tracing missing parts and putting the papers into good order. Earlier this year with the help of his son, Mike Jr., the Faulkner Collection came to BCU where it will now be housed permanently and will, we hope, eventually be available for study and performance. The DESUK Archive at BCU already contains Tony's library of books on Ellington and Strayhorn which he donated generously some years ago.

The scope of musical charts contained within the collection is nothing less than astonishing. Among the many highlights is a complete score for A Drum Is A Woman, the Shakespearean suite, Such Sweet Thunder, Suite Thursday, The Controversial Suite and titles such as Smada, Blue Skies, Sepia Panorama,  Primping at the Prom, Rose of the Rio Grande,  B.P. (Black Power), Hello Dolly, Fly Me to the Moon, Frustration,  Progressive Gavotte,  Transblucency, The Big Drag, Miss Lucy, Hit Me with a Hot Note, Kissing Bug, I Fell and Broke My Heart, I Got it Bad and that Ain't Good (Wild Bill Davis score) and the list goes on...

Many thanks to Dr Pedro Cravinho, Mike Fletcher, Mike Fletcher Jr and, of course, Tony Faulkner himself for the safe keeping, curating and creating this superb collection which will be a priceless legacy for admirers of the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn for years to come.