I wish I could remember where I’d read the
phrase ‘Cubist stride’ as a description of the piano style of Duke Ellington. I
think it’s a wonderful expression which conveys not only how Ellington
approached his playing (those angular, oblique sorties on the keyboard – great planks
of sound to drive and exhort the band which carried over into his solo forays)
but offers some insight into the place his music should occupy not just in
music (no irrelevant attempts to shoe horn his work into the ‘classical canon’)
but in twentieth century art – the Picasso of the piano!
And it’s a particularly appropriate
description for the film clip above where footage of Ellington performing in
trio with John Lamb and Sam Woodyard is intercut with shots of a sculpture by Joan Miró.
The film was made on la Côte d’Azur by Norman Granz during Ellington’s
sojourn there in 1966.
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