Cambridge Blues

Hearing Duke Ellington’s music performed live in a venue – or within the vicinity of a venue – where the Orchestra actually appeared, appeals to the imagination and can only enhance the experience.

 

Those attending Duke Ellington Sacred Concert in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge on 20 July this month will find themselves only a stone’s throw away from Great St Mary’s where Duke Ellington himself performed on 20 February, 1967.

 

I was alerted to news of this month’s concert in the first instance by a reminiscence from someone who was there at the performance in 1967 and will be there again on Saturday evening. The piece was recently published on Alison Kerr’s Blog.

 

A number of musicians and aficionados were asked to share their thoughts and feelings about Ellington, fifty years now from his passing.

 

One of the contributors was broadcaster Russell Davies who said:

 

“The closest any of us came to the band physically was in Great St May’s Church, 1967, when Duke played his first-version Sacred Concert. Our university group, the Idle Hour Jazz Band, were among the first to buy tickets. I’m going to be talking about this occasion in July in King’s College Chapel, because the Crouch End Festival Chorus is singing its own version of the piece, and I’m there as a witness to the original. 

 

“We were quite close to the stage (the holy end), and I was on the end of a row, with my foot sticking out a bit – I remember that because Johnny Hodges, on his way to the stage, tripped over it. I could have ended a great career there. I sat next to our clarinet player, Trevor Stent, and I remember his sobs of panic (“Oh NO! you CAN’T do that!”) when Russell Procope, an early arrival, starting carving visible strips off his reed. But of course he’d been doing it since the 1920s. The only person we were envious of at the Cambridge event was a drummer we knew under the name of Freddie Foskett, who wangled sole permission to be present at Duke’s rehearsal, where he took many fine photographs – we’d no idea he was a serious photographer at all (he wasn’t a great drummer). He’s gone now, but his work is quite revered – under his proper name of Brian Foskett.”

 

There is, in fact, no end of eyewitnesses to Ellington’s sacred Concert in 1967…

Also present was critic Clive James. In his book Cultural Amnesia, he writes of the occasion:

“The set-piece suite of his last years on the world tour, the Sacred Music Concert, was the etiolated culmination of his adventures in large-scale composition—the end point of a long development in an art-form for which his own best work had proved that “development” was an inappropriate word. I attended the Sacred Music Concert in Great St. Mary’s at Cambridge while I was an undergraduate. It was a privilege to see the grand old man still in command of his destiny and his charm, but there was too much sacred and not enough music. When the sidemen rose for their solos, showers of notes were no substitute for the carved phrases of their forgotten ancestors. Ellington must have known it: he was conducting a tour of his own tomb. Later on, outside in King’s Parade, I saw him ease himself into the limo with his old-time baritone saxophonist Harry Carney, sole survivor from the days of glory, the only Ellingtonian sideman who was ever allowed to ride in the car with the chief, instead of in the bus with everyone else.

 

“From the limo before it pulled away, Ellington smiled and twiddled his fingers at the fans, the bags under his eyes like sets of matched luggage. (I got a wink from him, which I filed away among my best memories.)”

An article about the Cambridge Sacred Concert was featured in an edition of Blue Light, the journal of the Duke Ellington Society UK.

Following its appearance, the following letter was received from Quentin Bryar, Secretary of  the Society...

 

  

Many thanks for the article in Blue Light about the Sacred Concert at Great St Mary's in Cambridge in 1967.

 

By complete coincidence, I met a lady earlier this year who sang at the concert. Jacqueline Stother, who was sitting next to me at a family wedding, was a student at Cambridge at the time and astonished me by saying she sang in the choir that night.

I had never met Jacqui before, but I plied her with questions of course, and later sent her some stuff about the concert including excerpts from Val Wilmer's review in Down Beat which is reproduced in Ken Vail's Duke's Diary, and the photograph which is in Duke Ellington's America by Harvey Cohen.

 

Here is Jacqui's reply:

 

Thank you so much for your e-mail and attachments about the Duke Ellington Concert in Cambridge.  The photographs were very interesting - I think I may be the girl with short hair, wearing a light-coloured top under a university gown, at the left end of the second row of the choir, but I'm not absolutely certain.  Unfortunately I can't remember a great deal about the concert, apart from being blown away by the saxophone solos, the vocalist, and of course Duke Ellington's playing.  I can't remember the tap-dancing  and drum solo at all.  

 

I can remember my feeling of anxiety about singing with such a famous band, especially since I was not really a jazz aficionado.  At the rehearsal I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to sing the top notes in tune (I sang soprano then, but didn't have a wide range - I now sing second alto!) and I remember Duke Ellington trying to get us to sing in jazz style (we were more used to classical pieces) he was very nice and encouraging.

 

The choir at the concert was not the main church choir, but a group of students who performed anthems at special services and gave occasional concerts.  From memory, we usually rehearsed on Sunday afternoons and our concerts often began at 8.30pm, after the students had returned to their colleges for their evening meal - hence the late starting time. 

 

I have contacted a couple of my contemporaries who sang in other choirs at Cambridge.  One was not in Cambridge that weekend, the other was at the Concert, but can only remember a great sense of occasion and the church being packed (an audience of 1,300, according to the article you sent - there are upper galleries above the main chancel). 

 

I'm sorry not to be more helpful, but the Concert did take place 50 years ago!

Details of the concert at King's College may be found here.

There is further reading on Ellington's Cambridge appearance from the local press here and a rather sniffy contemporary review for The Guardian by Ronald Atkins here.