Here is a round up of articles from the web re: the upcoming screening of Celebration in Coventry next Saturday, 29 December.
The photograph portrays Doctor Helen Wheatley of Warwick University, organiser of the event, with Brian Tesler, who commissioned the programme for broadcast on the ITV network.
The photograph portrays Doctor Helen Wheatley of Warwick University, organiser of the event, with Brian Tesler, who commissioned the programme for broadcast on the ITV network.
Celebration (tx. 21/2/66, ABC Television for ITV)
This newly restored recording of Celebration, the television programme of Duke Ellington’s 1966 performance in the Cathedral, will be the first public showing of Ellington’s performance in Coventry of the European premiere of his First Concert of Sacred Music since its original broadcast. This extraordinary conjunction of secular music in a sacred setting features a collaboration between the jazz legend and ABC’s Musical Director Robert Sharples, using ITV’s in-house singers the Cliff Adams Singers and the Jamaican baritone George Webb. In the half century since its broadcast, this landmark recording was presumed lost and forgotten in the history of jazz television. Following an approach to the Ghost Town project by jazz and TV historian Dr. Nicolas Pillai (Birmingham City University), the recording was ‘rediscovered’ 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. Interviewed about the Coventry concert, Ellington said in the TV Times, “It’s one of the most satisfying things I have ever done. And the most important.”
The screening will be introduced at the event by a specially recorded message from Brian Tesler who commissioned the programme for ABC Television. Tesler recalls the production of Celebration, and its reception, for us.
With thanks to Nic Pillai (BCU, for bringing this programme to our attention), Kaleidoscope (for excellent detective and restoration work), Studiocanal (for access to the master tape), the Warwick Impact Fund (for financial support), and Brian Tesler (for the wonderful intro).
A FILM of jazz legend Duke Ellington’s concert at Coventry Cathedral has been found after being ‘lost’ for more than 50 years.
The footage is unseen since its original broadcast in 1966 and Ellington himself described the performance as one of his most satisfying and important, the University of Warwick says.
Fittingly the recording will receive its first public viewing in 52 years on December 29 at the cathedral.
Ellington’s original performance was the European premiere of his first ‘Concert of Sacred Music’.
The university says it included a piece specially written for the concert, named ‘Come Easter’, which was only ever performed in Coventry that night.
Ellington said in a television interview: “It’s one of the most satisfying things I have ever done. And the most important.”
The performance was broadcast by ITV as part of their Easter programming, under the title Celebration.
The black and white recording has been digitally restored by archive television company Kaleidoscope with support from the University of Warwick.
The footage was found in the university’s StudioCanal archive.
Dr Helen Wheatley, of the University of Warwick’s department of film and television studies, said: “It is wonderful to be able to bring this important broadcast ‘back home’ to Coventry, thanks to the combined efforts of colleagues at the StudioCanal and Kaleidoscope archives.
“Ellington’s performance in Celebration is absolutely captivating.
“Coventry Cathedral has been an important site of arts and culture, as well as a significant place of worship, since its consecration in 1962.
“Ellington chose Coventry Cathedral to perform in as a beacon of modernity in the post-war era, and artists today continue to be attracted to this wonderful building and the forward-thinking people that run it”.
This event is the fourth part of a series of university 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, the university says.
Tickets are available here: www.universe.com/events/ghost-town-cathedral-of-culture-tickets-8DH9QM
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