'Lost film' of jazz legend Duke Ellington to be screened in Cathedral

A film of the jazz legend Duke Ellington playing in Coventry Cathedral has been restored for a new screening.

The recording of Duke was thought missing since it was broadcast on ABC Midlands Television (the forerunner of ITV) in 1966.

Duke Ellington described the concert as “one of the most satisfying things I have ever done. And the most important."

The film will be shown in the cathedral on December 29 - the first time it will have been seen since its original broadcast.

Ellington’s performance at Coventry Cathedral in February 1966, at which he was joined by his orchestra, was the European premiere of his concerts of his First Concert of Sacred Music.

It included a piece called Come Easter which was especially written for Coventry and was only performed at this one concert.

Ellington was joined in the concert by the Cliff Adams Singers with the baritone singer George Webb and his orchestra, comprising Herbie Jones, Cootie Wiliams, Cat Anderson, Mercer Ellington, Lawrence Brown, Chuck Connors, Buster Cooper, Jimmy Hamilton, Russell Procope, Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsales, Harry Carney, John Lamb and Sam Woodyard.

Midlands ABC broadcast 'secular music in a sacred settings' as part of their Easter programming, under the title Celebration.

The concert took place in Coventry’s then new Cathedral building, which had opened in 1962 following the bombing and destruction during World War II of the previous structure, built in the Middle Ages.

Coventry Cathedral is still recognised globally as a symbol of peace and reconciliation.

The black and white recording has been digitally restored by archive television company Kaleidoscope with support from the University of Warwick.

'Absolutely captivating'

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."

The screening of Celebration is part of Ghost Town: Cathedral of Culture, the fourth part of a series of events or ‘hauntings’ in the ongoing project Ghost Town: Civic Television and the Haunting of Coventry.

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.

Dr Wheatley is leading the project to screen archive footage of Coventry in the Ghost Town: Civic Television and the Haunting of Coventry project.

Ticket for the screening are free, available here.