Monday 28 March 2022

Live: April 2022

Saturday, 23 April, 19:30


Such Sweet Thunder Harmony in Harlem




SUCH SWEET THUNDER -

THE DUKE MEETS THE BARD

Harmony In Harlem come to St George's Guildhall in King's Lynn for a special performance of Such Sweet Thunder, the Shakespearean suite by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, on St George's Day - Shakespeare's birthday!

Get tickets from the Corn Exchange Box Office for tickets.

St GEORGE'S GUILDHALL

St George's Guildhall is a unique building. Not only is it the largest surviving mediaeval guildhall complex in the country, it is also the oldest theatre. Furthermore, it has the very special claim to be the only extant building that hosted William Shakespeare himself, when the plague forced the company to decamp from London.

ABOUT SUCH SWEET THUNDER

After Duke Ellington was invited to perform with his orchestra at the Stratford (Ontaria) Shakespearean Festival in 1956, for a return invitation in 1957 he and co-composer Billy Strayhorn set about creating a suite dedicated to the Bard. The resulting twelve movement suite, a set of vignetts of Shakespearean characters, became one of the most renowned albums in jazz history. The title of the suite derives from a line in A Midsummer-Night's Dream: I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder

The twelve movements are as set out below, the last representing Shakespeare himself. As Duke put it "the four elements are comedy, romance, tragedy and the writer himself", and by means of a contrivance the four becomes the musical interval of a fourth, and by going through all the keys in a circle of fourths one may arrive back at the original starting point on the circle. 

  • Such Sweet Thunder [Othello]
  • Sonnet for Caesar [Julius Caesar]
  • Sonnet to Hank Cinq [Henry V]
  • Lady Mac [Lady Macbeth]
  • Sonnet in Search of a Moor [Othello]
  • The Telecasters” [The Three Witches and Iago]
  • Up and Down, Up and Down, I Will Lead Them (Up and Down) [Puck]
  • Sonnet for Sister Kate [Katherine]
  • The Star-Crossed Lovers [Romeo and Juliet]
  • Madness in Great Ones [Hamlet]
  • Half The Fun [Cleopatra]
  • Circle of Fourths [Shakespeare himself]

Not only does the suite contain masterful descriptions of characters such as Hamlet and the the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, it contains four sonnets whose musical form exactly mirrors the fourteen lines of iambic pentameter of the poetic form. Cleopatra is described in terms of her parade down the river Nile on a golden barge, and Billy Strayhorn's masterpiece Up and Down, describes Puck's adventure in making many different couples fall in and out of love with each other in A Midsummer Night's Dream, represented by a modernistic, polyphonic entanglement of duets from within the orchestra.


Such Sweet Thunder is a challenging suite that Harmony In Harlem performed in 2014 and 2015. Not only that, but Michael Kilpatrick's transcription of the suite has been played by the Royal College of Music, The Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. In 2016, for part of the BBC Proms, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland performed Such Sweet Thunder at the Royal Albert Hall.

25, 26, 28, 29 April, 19:00 (EST)- 22:00 (EST)

Ellington 2022

Details here.


April 25

7:00 PM CEST 7:05 PM

8:00 PM CEST 9:00 PM CEST

Moderator : Brigitte Lundin

Welcome to Ellington 2022

Leïla Olivesi

Ellington Medleys

Marcello Piras

Evidence of subtext in Ellington’s music

Jack Chambers

Buried Treasures



April 26

7:00 PM CEST 8:00 PM CEST

9:00 PM CEST

Moderator: Leïla Olivesi

David Berger

Ellington the Arranger: 1930s

Michele Corcella

Beyond the Blues - Duke Ellington’s experimentation techniques in the New Orleans Suite.

Collage

Ellington at the University of Wisconsin July 1972



April 28

7:00 PM CEST 08:00 PM CEST

9:00 PM CEST

Moderator: Marilyn Lester

Invited keynote speaker: Anna Celenza Duke Ellington and Leonard Bernstein

Pedro Cravinho

The Duke and The Queen - Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald’s rst visit to Portugal revisited

Steven Bowie

Kenny Burrell and Duke Ellington



April 29

7:00 PM CEST 7:30 PM CEST

8:00 PM CEST 9:00 PM CEST

9:20 PM CEST

09:35 PM CEST

Moderator: Ulf Lundin

Isabelle Marquis

Dance to the Duke

Ken Steiner

Rare and unissued recordings from the Steven Lasker Collection

Michael Kilpatrick

Boola

Marilyn Lester

The International Ellington Society - The Time Has Come

Laurent Mignard

Welcome to Ellington Study Group Conference Paris 2023

Ulf Lundin – Summing Up



Leïla Olivesi

Ellington Medleys

Ellington medleys have been famous since Duke Ellington started using this musical form in the ‘30s. This presentation expounds on the way Ellington pleased the audience by playing several of his best-known melodies in a short time while extending his creativity. To this e ect, I will demonstrate how Ellington took advantage of the medleys by saving more time to play new works during the same concert. Through the analysis of di erent versions of Black & Tan Fantasy, I shall explain how one composition could be at the same time, a work in progress and a gem performed within a timeless medley.

Marcello Piras

Evidence Of Subtext In Ellington’s Music

This writer has o en stressed the presence of a descriptive approach in Ellington’s creations (see “Duke and Descriptive Music”, The Duke Ellington Companion. Cambridge Univerfsity Press 2015). Although the composer himself gave clues to some of his musical depictions, and evidence is steadily piling up that he did that even more o en than he admitted, skepticism is still widespread. However, a major aspect of this approach has not yet come under systematic scrutiny—Duke’s use of a subtext consisting of actual words implied in musical quotations. As our presentation shows, this was the very rst technique Duke resorted to. Also, its presence throughout his opus inherently voids any general objection to Ellington’s descriptivism.


Jack Chambers

Buried Treasures: Gems Left on the Shelf

In 1933, an English interviewer asked Duke Ellington about his “personal favourite composition. Ellington replied, “The things I’ve liked best I’ve left on the shelf....” . Though more than a thousand of Ellington’s compositions are preserved in well-wrought studio recordings, dozens of others were performed in concerts at least once but never recorded. These “shelved” compositions are less well known, and in some instances forgotten. From these dozens, I have selected ve gems. For a composer less prolifc than Ellington, they might have been considered masterpieces. For him, they were incidental  music, but dramatic evidence of his irrepressible muse.

David Berger

Ellington, The arranger: 1930s

The presentation will be focusing on how Duke transforms others’ work into his own through his unique rhythms, melodies, harmony and orchestration. I will illustrate this in discussing four Ellington arrangements of other composer’s work – The Sheik Of Araby, Ebony Rhapsody, Volga Vouty and Java Pachacha.



Michelle Corcella

Duke Ellington’s Experimentation Techniques In The New Orleans Suite

Ellington’s compositional style developed continuously until his death in 1974. The talk, based on Duke Ellington’s manuscripts, is aimed to stress how the New Orleans Suite was a revolutionary work and a milestone in orchestral jazz. The opening track (Blues for New Orleans) is based on the simplest blues chord progression but it’s probably one of the the most experimental tunes of the 20th century for what concerns chromaticism and jazz orchestration. Due to his complex harmonies, Ellington has always been compared to European composers such as Debussy and Stravinsky. However, the presentation will show how Duke stretched tonality to its limits in a completely di erent way: the blues as a source of not-conventional harmonies. In Portrait of Mahalia Jackson. Ellington paid homage to the queen of gospel music transforming the orchestra into a big pipe organ.I will show how Duke reached this goal. Finally, I will talk about the fundamental role of the copyist, the relationship between the manuscripts and the recording, and the problems of interpretation of this repertoire for both college and professional big bands.

Panel

Duke Ellington at the University of Wisconsin July 1972

At the invitation of the University of Wisconsin and its music department, Duke Ellington spent most of the first week of July 1972 there together with some members of his orchestra to give concerts, lectures, and masterclasses.  Ellington’s visit will be revisited in a multifaceted multimedia presentation full of memories and music.

Anna Celenza

The Duke (Ellington), the Maestro (Bernstein), and the Brewer (Schlitz)

On July 2, 1966, Duke Ellington and Leonard Bernstein met for the rst and only time at the home of Robert Uihlein, chairman and CEO of the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The encounter was captured on video by WTMJ-TV and reveals much about the frictions between classical music and jazz during the Civil Rights Era and the growing in uence of corporate sponsorship on both genres. Using the 28 minutes of footage as a jumping o point, this talk o ers a reassessment of Bernstein’s attitudes towards jazz, a deeper look at Ellington’s attempts to rewrite the narrative of American music history, and Uihlein’s e orts to appropriate the fame of both men as part of a new marketing campaign for Schlitz Blue Ribbon Beer.

Pedro Cravinho

Duke Ellington’s and Ella Fitzgerald’s First Visit To Portugal Revisited

In late-January 1966, the Duke Ellington Orchestra and Ella Fitzgerald arrived in Portugal as the rst stop of their European tour. The national press publicised Ellington and Fitzgerald’s arrival enthusiastically, announcing it as the most signi cant jazz-related event ever in the country, and their Lisbon concerts sold out. Even if Duke Ellington’s and Ella Fitzgerald’s concerts are considered milestones among local critics and fans, there is a lack of information about them in Ellington’s historiography Based on archival, bibliographical, and analytical research, the presentation examines the discourses in the national press that surrounded Ellington and Fitzgerald Lisbon’s concerts and expand to Duke Ellington’s last visit to the country in November 1973


Steven Bowie

Kenny Burrell and Duke Ellington

Kenny Burrell is one of the leading advocates for the legacy of Duke Ellington. In 1978, his UCLA class, “Ellingtonia,” became the rst full time course in the United States devoted to Duke Ellington. It is still part of the curriculum today. The presentation will cover Kenny Burrell’s connection with Ellington – from his teen years as a fan, to his person and professional connections with Ellington and his musicians, his tributes to the Ellington/Strayhorn canon, and to his work in establishing an academic platform for the world of Ellingtonia.

Isabelle Marquis

Dance To The Duke

Jazz and dance were completely tied, at least until the end of World War II and Duke Ellington’s music deeply re ects this connection. As a matter of fact, dance intimately belongs to Duke Ellington’s world: from clubs (Cotton Club) to concert halls (Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center), from ballrooms (Savoy, Apollo) to the opera, and even in cathedrals. His most iconic compositions It Don’t Mean a Thing, Take The A Train, Caravan are still delighting nowadays lindy hoppers, tap dancers and all kinds of jazz dancers. The presentation will focus on four aspects: Eccentric dance in the revues of the 20s-30s with Bessie Dudley and Earl Snake Hips Tucker, Tap dance with Bunny Briggs, Swing dance with the Whitey’s lindy hoppers and Modern jazz with Alvin Ailey and Maurice Béjart.


Steven Lasker / Ken Steiner

Rare and unissued recordings from the Steven Lasker Collection

Steven Lasker will share some never-issued Ellington rarities from his collection. They will be presented by Ken Steiner and the presentation will open with selections from a discographically-unlisted 1937 Cotton Club broadcast. It will be followed by a number of other “goodies”.

Michael Kilpatrick

Boola

Boola was Duke Ellington’s concept for a “tone parallel to the history of the American Negro”, originating as early as December 1930. Duke was reported to be composing Boola throughout the decade, yet nothing tangible emerged. It was eventually abandoned and superseded by Black, Brown and Beige, written afresh in 1943, although employing much of the narrative of Boola. My presentation is based on my recent discovery of several manuscripts representing sections of Boola, vindicating Duke’s repeated claims that Boola was taking shape. What’s more, putting dates to these manuscripts and tracing their thematic content provides a remarkable hypothesis as to what Duke may have been planning for Black, Brown and Beige.


Marilyn Lester

The International Ellington Society – Time Has Come

While Duke was still alive, several appreciation societies were founded, dedicated to examining and enjoying the Ellington (and Strayhorn) legacy. Many of those societies have disbanded and others are on shaky ground, owing to shi ing cultural norms as well as aging out members It’s time to support Ellington’s legacy with a realignment of the concept of a Duke Ellington Society to t the modern, techno-savvy global universe. The presentation will address the aims of such a society and the practical issues involved in setting it up.


Saturday 5 March 2022

Live: March 2022

Sunday, 13 March, 13:30 CET

Conférence ”Duke Ellington : Musique et Société“ par Raphaël Imbert
La Maison du Duke, Sunnyside, Paris


Le jazz est un fait de société remarquable dans l'édification de notre modernité contemporaine. Parmi les créateurs les plus influents de cet art, Duke Ellington tient une place à part, pleinement universelle mais aussi difficilement définissable d'un point de vue esthétique, politique, philosophique. Il y a un paradoxe "Ellington". En évoquant les engagements, les réflexions, l'éducation de Duke Ellington, nous verrons de quelle manière il éclaire les enjeux de la société de son temps, jusqu'à notre propre actualité. Son engagement maçonnique, sa foi religieuse, sa curiosité esthétique, ses positions politiques, son rôle dans les grands mouvements artistiques et intellectuels qui jalonnent sa carrière, sont autant d'éléments qui montrent un Ellington pleinement inscrit dans son époque et source d'inspiration pour la nôtre.

 

Musicien autodidacte, Raphaël IMBERT poursuit un chemin atypique dans la grande famille du Jazz et des musiques improvisées ; saxophoniste, pédagogue exigeant et irrésistible, arrangeur et improvisateur recherché, il est récipiendaire d'une Victoire du Jazz en 2018 pour l'album Music is My Hope.


(Jazz is a remarkable fact of society in the construction of our contemporary modernity. Among the most influential creators of this art, Duke Ellington holds a special place, fully universal but also difficult to define from an aesthetic, political and philosophical point of view. There is an "Ellington" paradox. By evoking Duke Ellington's commitments, reflections and education, we will see how he sheds light on the issues of society of his time, up to our own present day. His Masonic commitment, his religious faith, his aesthetic curiosity, his political positions, his role in the great artistic and intellectual movements that marked his career, are all elements that show an Ellington fully in line with his time and a source of inspiration for ours.

 

Self-taught musician, Raphaël IMBERT pursues an atypical path in the great family of Jazz and improvised music; saxophonist, demanding and irresistible pedagogue, sought-after arranger and improviser, he was awarded a Victoire du Jazz in 2018 for the album Music is My Hope.)


Participation aux frais : 10 € (8 € pour les adhérents)


Details here.



Saturday 19th March 2022, 19:30

St Andrew's Hall, Norwich

DUKE ELLINGTON: The Best of the Sacred Concerts

Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra


Singers - Louise Marshall, Mary Carewe and Cleveland Watkiss

                                     Tap dancer - Bradley Wray 

                                     Narrator - Revd Richard Lawry 

                                     Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by David Dunnett

                                     Echoes of Ellington Jazz Orchestra conducted by Pete Long


From the website:


The Phil Chorus realises a long-standing ambition to revive its performance of Duke Ellington’s Best of the Sacred Concerts, last given in the Norfolk & Norwich Festival in 1999.

 

The music comes from three ‘Sacred Concerts’ which Duke Ellington (pictured left) performed in the 60s and early 70s and he described as "the most important thing I have ever done".

 

The Choir will be joined by Pete Long and his award-winning jazz orchestra, Echoes Of Ellington, together with some stellar soloists, a tap dancer and the Revd Richard Lawry, Vicar of Blakeney and former actor, as Narrator, in what promises to be a thoroughly entertaining evening, and a little different to the Phil's typical offerings!


Details here.



Thursday, March 24, 2022

American Symphony Orchestra Salutes The Great Duke Ellington
Carnegie Hall, New York

Music Director Leon Botstein will lead the American Symphony Orchestra on March 24 in a tribute to the genre-defying genius of the great Duke Ellington. The all-Ellington symphonic concert at Carnegie Hall, is where the composer played a series of annual concerts and premiered many of his greatest works, including Black, Brown, and Beige and New World A-Comin’. The pieces will be performed for Jazz Trio and Large Orchestra by American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and teacher Marcus Roberts, who performs with his Marcus Roberts Trio. The evening also features Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist Catherine Russell, best known for her album Harlem on my Mind and her appearance as a featured artist on the soundtrack album for the HBO TV series Boardwalk Empire.


Duke Ellington+Marcus Roberts Trio


Carnegie Hall (Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage)

Leon Botstein, conductor

Marcus Roberts Trio

Marcus Roberts, piano

Rodney Jordan, bass

Jason Marsalis, drums

Catherine Russell, singer

All-Ellington program

Black, Brown, and Beige Suite (Arr. Maurice Peress)

Satin Doll (Arr. Chuck Israels)

Harlem (Arr. Luther Henderson & Maurice Peress)

Sophisticated Lady (Arr. Morton Gould)

Night Creature for Jazz Band and Orchestra (Arr. Luther Henderson, Ed. Gunther Schuller)

New World A Comin’ (Arr. Maurice Peress)

Three Black Kings (Completed by Mercer Ellington, Arr. Luther Henderson)


Duke Ellington’s musical style employs a unique blend of classical and jazz compositional techniques that also combine improvisation with written works, making him one of the most influential jazz composers of all time. Although he considered his compositions “beyond category” and he never defined himself as a jazz composer, his instrumental groupings, improvisational skills, and jazz arranging brought the world a notable American sound that can be heard in works like Sophisticated Lady and Harlem. His symphonic suite Three Black Kings demonstrates his focus on musical form and jazz composition. Ellington said his aim in writing Night Creature—which premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1955—was “to try to make the symphony swing.”


Details here.



Friday, March 25th, 2022

The Such Sweet Thunder Continuum Conference
Center for Jazz Studies, Columbia University



Senior scholars and graduate students present research on Such Sweet Thunder and related topics.

About this event


Participants include NEA Jazz Master Delfeayo Marsalis, David Hajdu, Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn, Patricia Akhimie, Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark and author of Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World (Routledge 2018), David Berger, composer, arranger, conductor, and Ellington authority, and Jack Chambers, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto and author of Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis and Sweet Thunder: Duke Ellington's Music in Nine Themes.


Please note that this event will be virtual. A link will be sent to the email address that you use to register a few days before the event.


Details here.

For more information about the Such Sweet Thunder Event series, Please visit The Such Sweet Thunder Website.