State of Grace

Come Saturday, it will be the 58th anniversary of the première of Duke Ellington's Concert of Sacred Music which took place at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco on 16 September, 1965.

It struck me listening to the CD version of this performance yesterday afternoon how similar, in some ways, is this performance to the structure of the famous Newport Festival appearance nine years earlier, i.e.: Ellington has one new, extended piece or 'suite' for the occasion (here, In The Beginning... God) and towards the end of the performance, there is some barnstorming excitement generated by a number already in the book. In the case of Newport, of course, this was the wailing interval of Paul Gonsalves sandwiched between Diminuendo and Crescendo. Here, Bunny Briggs dances before the Lord in a suitably uptempo reconditioned version of the melody to Come Sunday. Just a thought...

Trawling the 'net with regard to the première of Sacred Music, I discovered that the occasion had been commemorated on Ellington's birthday, 29 April, 1990 by the Duke Ellington Orchestra under the direction of Mercer Ellington. Here is that performance from the Internet Archive.

Duke Ellington & His Orchestra consecrated San Francisco's Grace Cathedral with the premiere of "A Concert Of Sacred Music" on September 16, 1965. The concert was filmed by KQED, in partnership with San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic Ralph Gleason.

“I recognized this as an exceptional opportunity,” Ellington wrote in his 1973 autobiography Music Is My Mistress.  “Now I can say openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.”

Read Jesse Hamlin's "Sanctified By Jazz: Music at Grace Cathedral."

25 years later (1990), Jazz In The City (now SFJAZZ) presented the 25th Anniversary of Ellington's "most important work of his career" at Grace Cathedral, featuring The Duke Ellington Orchestra (dir. by Mercer Ellington), Brock Peters, Jimmy McPhail, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, and special guest Bunny Briggs.

 

Duke Ellington (center) and Reverend C. Julian Bartlett (left) and Bishop James Pike (right) meet to announce that Duke Ellington will compose a piece and perform a sacred music concert to celebrate the opening of Grace Cathedral photos shot 08/26/1965