Celebration

 

The much anticipated English translation of Luca Bragalini's  Dalla Scala a Harlem. I sogni sinfonici di Duke Ellington will be published as Duke Ellington's Symphonic Visions on 15 December.

Recordings of some of the music featured in the book have been published on line by The International Center for American Music. Here is Ellington's 1972 composition, Celebration. The piece was composed for  the sesquincentenniel (the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary) of Jacksonville, Florida.

You can read more about the occasion here.

Centro di Documentazione sulla Musica Americana · Duke Ellington - Celebration (World premiere recording)

Live: December 2025

It is advisable to book any event listed here in advance when possible and check with the promoter/ organiser to ensure any performance is going ahead as planned before travelling.

Sunday 7 December 2025, 14:30

North West Duke Ellington Orchestra directed by Phil Shotton

Lowther Pavilion & Gardens, Lowther Pavilion, West Beach, Lytham St Annes, FY8 5QQ

The North West Duke Ellington Orchestra was formed in 2024, and now embarks on its second tour, playing at Wigan Jazz Club on Sunday 30th November and at Lowther Pavilion on the afternoon of Sunday 7th December

Directed by acclaimed saxophonist and bandleader Phil Shotton, the 15-piece big band brings together Ellington obsessed musicians from across the North West, including Cheshire, Lancashire, Liverpool City Region, and Manchester. The orchestra is dedicated to celebrating the music of jazz legend Duke Ellington, performing pieces from across his illustrious career—from his early 1920s Cotton Club dance tunes to the dynamic and sophisticated suites of the 1950s.

The ensemble performs music largely sourced from The Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra’s Essentially Ellington programme, featuring note-for-note transcriptions of historic live performances by The Duke Ellington Orchestra. The band gives audiences an authentic experience of the timeless brilliance of Ellington and his long-time collaborator, Billy Strayhorn, as they were meant to be heard.

Tickets here.

Everything Is (Un) Copa- cetic

 For sale recently on eBay, pictured below, the menu-style programme for Duke Ellington's 1959 revival of Jump For Joy.

As ever, David Palmquist's invaluable Duke Where And When gives context to this particular souvenir...

Jump for Joy revival

World première, two shows nightly, 8:30 and 11:30 pm.

Duke Ellington Music Society says the show was reviewed in the February 1959 newsletter of the Duke Ellington Jazz Society in Hollywood.

Pittsburgh Courier:

"Jump For Joy, the Duke Ellington musical which had its debut on the coast a few seasons ago, will get its first crack at the East when it opens the season at the Copa City in Miami Beach.

  Under a deal set by Joe Glaser, the Sid Kuller show will star Duke Ellington for four weeks when it opens at the big nitery.

  The Ellington booking assures the reopening of the Copa which was operated by Lou Walters as the Cafe De Paris last season..."

Library of Congress Performing Arts Encyclopedia:

Jump For Joy (revival) / James "Stumpy" Cross [theatrical performance]

Published/Created 1959-01-20

Abstract: Through Feb 8.

Revival of Ellington's 1941 revue, "Jump for Joy" with a modification of the original score for a cast of 50-plus. Musical numbers staged by Nick Castle; music composed by Duke Ellington; produced, written and directed by Sid Kuller.

Cast: Duke Ellington, Barbara McNair, James (Stump) Cross and Harold (Stumpy) Cromer, Timmie Rogers, Jimmy Randolph, Norma Miller and her Jazz Men, Lil Greenwood, The Miller Brothers, Othella Dallas, Malley Tore, and 30 Gorgeous Beige Beauties. The musical numbers featuring James (Stump) Cross and Harold (Stumpy) Cromer, included Walk It Off introduced by Ellington, with Timmie Rogers, Norma Miller and dancers; and Made to Order with Timmie Rogers.

By the time Ellington and Strayhorn returned from Europe, the Mine Boy/Saturday Laughter project was abandoned and Joe Glaser had signed the Copa City Jump For Joy contract on behalf of Duke Ellington, Inc.

Contract terms:

15 musicians led by "Duke Ellington Inc. presenting Duke Ellington"

Name and Address of Place of Engagement:

Copa City, Miami Beach, Florida

Date(s) of employment:

Commencing January 20, 1959 for four weeks with two four-week options

Hours of employment:

Two shows nightly, 7 days weekly, in Production JUPM [sic] FOR JOY

First option to be exercised by end of 2nd week of original term; second option to be exercised by end of fifth week. There shall be one week of rehearsals (commencing January 13, 1959) at minimum guarantee of $2,500 or Union Scale, whichever sum is the greater.

Type of engagement:

Night club

Standard top billing clause

Wage agreed upon:

$7,000 weekly to be paid at the end of each week.

Employer:

Copa City Inc. by Oscar Markovich, President, Copa City, Miami Beach, Fla.

On Feb 2, Copa City gave notice it would not exercise its option. The show closed on February 8 or 9 (a run of only 3 weeks), and Franceschina says the club remained closed for the rest of the season.

Background per Hajdu:

At Sid Kuller's urging and reportedly with the civil rights movement in mind, Ellington offered a revival of Jump For Joy.

Since Dorothy Kilgallen commented on them in her December 19 column, rehearsals seem to have started in mid-December even though the show was yet to be rewritten.

Tom Whaley:

"I went to Miami once with Strayhorn, and we stayed four days and three nights writing music for a different version of Jump for Joy...."

Strayhorn joined Kuller in Miami after Christmas to begin rewriting the show which was to begin in less than three weeks. By the time Ellington arrived the second week of January, they had written several new songs, including So The Good Book Says, If We Were Any More British, We Couldn't Talk At All and Walk It Off. With Duke, they wrote nearly another dozen songs and they continued writing new songs for a week after the show opened.

Nearly 30 dancers and singers were crammed onto Copa City's "modest" stage.

Kuller produced the show and cut and added songs and skits nightly.

The program showed the music was written by Ellington and Strayhorn is shown as the arranger.

The copyright registrations for So The Good Book Says, If We Were Any More British, We Couldn't Talk At All and Walk It Off were for Ellington and Strayhorn as co-composers.

Franceschina:

"Whatever the cause, Strayhorn made it clear that this was Duke's show, and that he was there simply to do a job and enjoy himself."

The contract was for four weeks with two optional extensions which the promoter did not use. While Stratemann and Vail have the show closing February 8, a Sunday, The Miami Times said it closed Monday night. Monday would round out the fourth week.

Recordings:

Timner and Franceschina say one complete show appears to have been recorded for Columbia but has not been released, and a tape is circulating among collectors.

There is conflicting information about the recording medium.

DEMS has a query from a "Friend of Andrew Homzy" who describes his/her copy of the recording as a professionally recorded acetate.

Sjef Hoesfmit's reply concludes by listing the titles "on the record."

Steven Lasker believes the recording was on tape, with the reel provided to the late Jerry Valburn by the late Al Celley, and that it is now in the Library of Congress Jerry Valburn collection.

A query was made to the Library of Congress Recorded Sound Research Center to confirm if the open-reel tape is in the collection.

The song titles on the record or tape per the various sources are:

Comedy Act [Nielsen only]

When I Trilly with My Filly

Medley: Don't Get Around Much Anymore, Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me, In a Sentimental Mood, Mood Indigo, I'm Beginning To See the Light, Sophisticated Lady, Just Squeeze Me, It Don't Mean a Thing, Solitude, Things Ain't What They Used To Be

Walk It Off

Brown-Skin Gal [The Brown-Skin Gal in Nielsen]

Cotton Tail [Nielsen reports a segue to Oh, Yeah!]

Bad Woman (So the Good Book Says) [Nielsen shows Gimme Some Good Whiskey And A Bad Woman]

Strictly for Tourists [not in Nielsen]

The Gay Cowboy [only in Nielsen]

Show 'Em You Got Class

Three Shows Nightly

Syndicated columnist Dorothy Kilgallen:

"Those who have caught rehearsals of the Duke Ellington musical Jump For Joy (due to try out at Copa City in Miami, Fla.) report that Demita Jo, the feminine lead, is apt to steal all the notices when the show opens on Broadway next year."

In her column published in various papers between 1959-01-02 and 1959-01-07, Kilgallen said the show had been called off due to money problems, but her 1959-01-10 column says:

"Burnett Roth, representing the management of Copa City in Miami, vows that despite the rumors, Jump For Joy will open there as scheduled."

Syndicated columnist Jack Bell:

"Duke Ellington and Sid Kuller have written a musical, Jump for Joy. Duke wrote the music, Sid the lyrics and script–through long months of writing and re-writing. It goes into Copa City Jan. 20. Barbara McNair, Columbia records singing star, will sing the feminine lead.

  The show opens with a number called Evolution of a Beat. It's Duke's music, starting with music of early savages and scenes to match and moving through to modern music."

The Nightlife with George Bourke column in the Jan 23 Miami Herald reviews the show describing some of the music briefly, but giving the show only lukewarm approval, calling it a polite and slick presentation.

Barney Waters, Fort Lauderdale News:

"Gold-plated Copa City...opened its many-splendored doors again this week and the music of Duke Ellington breathed new life into the palace that has laid dormant for several seasons.

     Playing before a packed first night house, Tuesday Ellington's Jump for Joy production placed 350 people under visual arrest for more than two hours before releasing them to make room for another room full of willing prisoners.

     The all-Negro cast, headed by Timmie Rogers, got maximum mileage out of Ellington's original songs and Nick Castle's musical numbers. Sid Kuller weaved the whole thing into lookability by writing, directing and producing the show.

     For sheer enjoyment, it was Rogers who stole the show, especially with a hilarious skit called Made to Order. In it, Rogers wants a zoot suit that demands such measuring as "shoulders – sadistic; waist – murderistic.

     And male singing lead Jimmy Randolph was an excellent pawn for the peronality of Barbara McNair in several twosomes, outstanding of which was a catch tune called But... .

     As for the other comedy skits, they went only to prove why you don't see many Negro comics. Besides very, very mediocre dialogue, the actors' diction fell short of the goal line several times."

Teachout's single paragraph on the revival says the backers lost $100,000. 

Source

Live: November 2025

It is advisable to book any event listed here in advance when possible and check with the promoter/ organiser to ensure any performance is going ahead as planned before travelling.

Wednesday 12 November 2025

Echoes of Ellington with Pete Long and Sara Oschlag

Ella Fitzgerald and the Duke Ellington Songbook

The Concorde, Stoneham Lane, Eastleigh, Hampshire, SO50 9HQ

About this event

Member Ticket - £30

Non-member Ticket - £35

Member Dining + Ticket - £65

Non Member Dining + Ticket - £70

Hotel Deal - Dinner Bed & Breakfast plus tickets for 2 just £229 per couple

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MENU - SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY

Over 18s Only

Doors Open 7pm

On Stage 8.15pm

ELLA & DUKE presented by The Pete Long Orchestra

In the late 1950s to the early 1960s two of the true greats of jazz made a series of recordings which continue to dazzle listeners to this day.

Playing music from the 1958 album, 'Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Songbook', this concert unites the award-winning Echoes Of Ellington orchestra led by Peter Long with internationally acclaimed jazz vocal virtuoso Sara Oschlag, to recreate and achieve an evening of the very finest in swing music.

Expect Take The 'A' Train, Caravan, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, C Jam Blues, I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart and many more.

Book tickets

Sunday, 16 November 15:00 (EST)

Ellington Effect Workshop #57

Depk with David Berger

About Depk

Depk is the fourth of nine parts of the Far East Suite (aka Expressions Of The Far East and Impressions Of The Far East). Ellington wrote five parts (Tourist Point Of View, Depk, Mount Harissa, Blue Pepper and Amad, Strayhorn wrote three parts (Bluebird Of Delhi, Isfahan, and Agra) and Ellington and Jimmy Hamilton collaborated on Ad Lib On Nippon).

The suite was inspired by the band’s State Department tour of the Middle and Near East in 1963, which was cut short when President Kennedy was assassinated. Ad Lib On Nippon came later from a 1964 tour of Japan and was not part of the original suite but added for the recording. Strayhorn’s Isfahan was written just prior to the State Department tour and was originally entitled Elf.

Although many of Ellington’s suites are of the highest quality, Such Sweet Thunder and Far East Suite were the most celebrated and influential on future generations of jazz composers and arrangers. Such Sweet Thunder pushed the boundaries of conventional chord progressions and song forms, while Far East Suite, written only six years later, led the way into modal writing primarily with Tourist Point Of View and Amad. Although Ellington denies being influenced by music outside his band, Coltrane’s contribution is felt heavily and will continue to be heard in later Ellington pieces like Chinoiserie from Afro Eurasian Eclipse.

Even while Ellington is at his modernistic best, he does not forsake his earlier swing roots and orchestral colours. Although now framed in the latest style, most of the soloists (Hodges, Carney, and Brown) perform in their now antique ways. Gonsalves and Ellington are more contemporary in their contributions. Hamilton remains unique with one foot in European Classical music and one foot in almost bebop.

Tickets here or annual subscription here.

North West Duke Ellington Orchestra directed by Phil Shotton

Whelley Ex-Servicemen's Club Vauxhall Road, Wigan WN1 3LU

Dedicated to celebrating the music of jazz legend Duke Ellington performing pieces from across his illustrious career from his early Cotton Club dance tunes to the dynamic and sophisticated suites of the .1950s

Book tickets here.

Live: October 2025

It is advisable to book any event listed here in advance when possible and check with the promoter/ organiser to ensure any performance is going ahead as planned before travelling.

Sunday 5 October 15:00 (EST)

Ellington Effect Workshop #56: The Blues

with David Berger

About The Blues

23 January, 1943 stands out as one of the most significant dates in the annals of jazz. It was on this evening that Duke Ellington premiered his first and only symphony at Carnegie Hall. He didn’t call it Symphony #1 or even refer to it as a symphony, but in essence that’s what it is: a 3- movement motivic-driven work divided into nine parts lasting 52 minutes.

Black: Work Song, Come Sunday, Light

Brown: West Indian Dance, Emancipation Celebration, The Blues

Beige: Beige, Cy Runs Rock Waltz, Symphonette

As great as this piece was, many critics failed to understand both its importance and its greatness. The classical critics only saw its minor flaws in continuity and didn’t understand Ellington’s jazz harmonic, structural, and developmental language and process. On the other hand, the jazz reviewers weren’t ready for jazz to leave the dance hall and viewed BBB as pretentious. The sold-out audience (who attended despite a blizzard) disagreed and was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

Due to the AF of M recording ban at that time, no commercial recording was made. However, the concert was recorded live but wasn’t released until three decades later. When the recording ban ended, Ellington recorded a few excerpts of BBB in December 1944. He never performed the piece in its entirety again. When he recorded portions of it in later years, he still didn’t fix all the original problems, the most egregious of which was the ultrapatriotic ending. The 1945 RCA recordings, although incomplete, are the best played and recorded. The piece and the band were a bit unprepared at the premiere, and later bands had vastly different personnel that didn’t always address the earlier music. There have been several performances since Ellington’s death, but, considering the quality of music and its historical importance, this gem has been overlooked.

Come Sunday has become well-known to jazz fans and many churchgoers, but it’s only one of the great themes in BBB. Ellington’s initial idea for this piece was the 1935 short film Symphony In Black, which was a series of vignettes depicting contemporary Negro life in America. Although the film won an Academy Award for Best Short Subject, it suffers from being too short and lack of musical preparation. Ellington ran out of time and used previously written pieces to tell the story. Ducky Wucky, Saddest Tale, and Merry Go-Round are all great pieces but lack the cohesion of a singular work.

If Symphony In Black was too big a story to tell in 15 minutes, BBB attempted to tell the entire 324-year history of the American Negro in 52 minutes. Mistake number one. BBB begins with Work Song, which bears a strong resemblance to the opening scene of Symphony In Black’s The Laborers. It’s fully developed and leads to the spiritual theme, Come Sunday, which is similar to Hymn Of Sorrow, the spiritual theme of Symphony In Black. Light closes out the first movement. Curiously, Brown begins with two standalone dances before concluding with The Blues, which combines operatic recitative, harmonically sophisticated and earthy downhome blues.

The contiguous Beige includes a bit of Billy Strayhorn’s writing in 3/4 before easing into Ellington’s expressive medium swing. It’s clear that a solid ending is called for, but Ellington’s frequent mental block surfaces. He decides to write a patriotic coda for Herb Jeffries to sing. When this proved to be too over the top, he removed the vocal, but the flag waving was still too much. He never did find a satisfactory ending.

In an inspired piece of music with numerous memorable themes, The Blues stands out as one of Ellington’s most iconic pieces. There is nothing like it in his entire canon. Like Come Sunday, it is clearly a concert piece, while descending from the dance hall, it has no place there. The Blues is a dramatic description which draws on jazz and blues as well as the recitative/accompaniment of opera.

Ticket available here. Annual membership available here.

Sunday 12 October 2025, 15:00 (BST)

Harmony In Harlem directed by Michael Kilpatrick

St John's ARC, St John's Walk, Market Street, Harlow, Essex, CM17 0AJ

Tel: 01279 417575 

Harmony In Harlem is a 16-piece jazz orchestra specialising in the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, directed by Michael Kilpatrick, whose research on Duke's manuscripts and recordings has resulted in a repertoire unique amongst jazz orchestras. From the 'jungle sounds' of the Cotton Club era through to the esoteric 'Such Sweet Thunder' of the late 1950s and beyond, we can present a vibrant and gripping performance of music from the greatest bandleader/composer in jazz history.

The orchestra, based in Cambridge, performs regularly across the East of England.

Find out more about us.

Tickets: £17.50/£7.50/£0 online or cash/card on the door

Doors open at 2:30pm.

Tickets on sale here.

The Ellington Piano Project: Eastbourne 1973 Reimagined is released on Rubicon Jazz. 

Eastbourne’s Congress Theatre hosts a special Ellington in Eastbourne gala on 12 October – BOOKINGS

TOUR DATES

Forsyth’s Music, Manchester, 7 October – BOOKINGS

606 Club, London, 8 October.- BOOKINGS

Eastside Jazz Club, Birmingham, 9 October (lunchtime) – BOOKINGS

Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham, 9 October (eve). – BOOKINGS

Jazz at St Andrew’s, Hove, 10 October.

The Congress Theatre, Eastbourne, 12 October (part of ‘Ellington in Eastbourne’ gala show)

More details about this exciting project here.

Wednesday, 22 October 2025, 19:30 (GMT)

Louis and Duke In London

The Jazz Repertory Company

Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London SW1X 9DQ

In 1932, Louis Armstrong was a sensation when he made his European debut at the London Palladium. A year later Duke Ellington’s Famous Orchestra became the talk of the town when they topped the bill at the same venue performing such classics as Ring Dem Bells, Bugle Call Rag, Black and Tan Fantasy and Mood Indigo.

Now, over 90 years later, the 13-piece Midnite Follies Orchestra (founded by Keith Nichols and Alan Cohen in 1978) recreate the sound of Duke Ellington’s Famous Orchestra in all its majesty with Vimala Rowe performing as Duke’s featured singer Ivie Anderson in Stormy Weather and It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.

For this concert, Enrico Tomasso plays the role of Louis Armstrong. At the tender age of six, Enrico performed for Louis Armstrong’s arrival in England in 1968 and the two of them became great friends, exchanging letters for the rest of Armstrong’s life. Satchmo’s influence is paramount in Rico’s style and the spirit of this jazz legend lives on in his playing.

Both Louis and the Duke appeared at the Palladium with a number of variety acts of the time (Duke was 14th on the bill after an evening of juggling, tumbling, magic and novelty items). To recreate this style of presentation, the concert also features a selection of fine entertainers, including the Mampara Dance Troupe and Thomas ‘Spats’ Langham performing as George Formby.

Connecting us directly with the world of show business of the early ’30s we have John Sutton who, besides being drummer with the Bryan Ferry Orchestra, Chris Barber and the Pasadena Roof Orchestra, is the grandson of music hall star Randolph Sutton who appeared at the Palladium with Duke Ellington.

The concert is presented by master of ceremonies Mr Kerry Shale.

PERFORMERS

The Midnite Follies Orchestra appearing as Duke Ellington’s Famous Orchestra of 1933

Enrico Tomasso as Louis Armstrong

Vimala Rowe as Duke Ellington’s singer Ivie Anderson

Thomas ‘Spats’ Langham as George Formby

Angela Andrew as ‘The Snakehips Girl’ Bessie Dudley

John Sutton novelty drummer

The Mampara Dance Company

Kerry Shale presenter

RELATED LINKS

www.jazzrep.co.uk

www.midnitefollies.com

Book now

Eastbourne Promise

There is little over a week now until the tour headed by bassist Arnie Somogyi and pianist Mark Edwards to promote the release of their new album The Ellington Piano Project.

The album has already been released across the major streaming services and the playlist from YouTube is embedded at the end of this post.

The tour culminates in a mini-festival at The Congress Theatre, Eastbourne. Dates on the tour are listed below and you can read more about the project on our previous posts here. 

This is an excellent piece on the forthcoming tour from  UK Jazz News by John Fordham. No copyright infringement intended.

(Click on the links for original source)

On 1 December 1973, the Duke Ellington Orchestra was running late on the 300-mile drive from Lancashire to Eastbourne, heading for the last of its back-to-back gigs at the end of a gruelling six-week UK tour. Ellington had been on the road all his long working life, and had composed plenty of masterpieces in hotel-rooms, and on buses and trains and planes, but what was probably uppermost in the 74 year-old’s mind on this long day was the prospect of heading home to New York. 

At this point, the maestro was suffering from cancer and pneumonia, though he made light of both, and he was in the last six months of his life. Several of the great soloists from the band’s glorious heyday had died or quit. And yet, as this writer recalls from hearing the band a few weeks earlier in London, the 1973 edition of this iconic outfit could still rouse a devoted crowd with the enthralling harmonies, imaginative soulfulness and driving swing that had made Ellington an undisputed giant of 20th century music in any genre. 

When the band pulled up that Saturday evening at Eastbourne’s Congress Theatre, they were surprised to find microphones set up for a live recording. But the show went on, as in Ellington’s world it always had, until his much-mourned death in May 1974. The following year, RCA released a live album entitled Eastbourne Performance, because that gig in the quiet English seaside town turned out to have hosted his last known recording. Hindsight comparisons with landmark Ellington works running back to the 1920s may have affected the muted critical response the album received, though the Duke’s own jubilantly propulsive piano-playing on the set mostly did get its proper due. 

This month, double-bassist/composer Arnie Somogyi and pianist, producer and arranger Mark Edwards – two of the most experienced and adaptable musicians in UK jazz – celebrate Eastbourne Performance in the most creatively personal of ways, born of an astonishing run of coincidences. 

With The Ellington Piano Project: Eastbourne 1973 Reimagined, a 13-track collection of six Ellington and Billy Strayhorn originals (only two of which were on the 1973 set) and improvisations and new pieces by the pair and three empathic partners – saxist Gideon Tazelaar, vocalist Sara Oschlag, and drummer Matthew Holmes – steer a remarkable tribute that is both respectfully devoted to its source, and a creative salute to the inspirational influence Ellington had on the jazz generations that have followed him. 

On a three-way Zoom for UKJN, we get together to look into how it happened. Mark Edwards takes up the story. 

‘It all started in this famous old Eastbourne recording studio called Echo Zoo’, Edwards begins, ‘which is a place I’ve been going to since 1986 – Paul McCartney and Billy Bragg and all kinds of great people have recorded there, and it had an amazing vibe and fantastic vintage analogue equipment, microphones and monitors dating from the 1970s. If you wanted the wonderful as-live audio sound of the famous jazz recordings of the 1960s with people like Coltrane and Miles, you could get it there.

‘A friend of mine called Dave Lynch took it over about 15 years ago, he’s an absolute master engineer really dedicated to analogue and organic recording processes, minimal microphones, very careful mic placement. A few years back, Arnie and I did a jazz album there, using just a few microphones in the room with this old Steinway piano that Dave had acquired from the Congress Theatre. When we finished, we thought the music reminded us a bit of the 1960s Ellington album Money Jungle, which had Ellington on piano with Charles Mingus and Max Roach. The next week, Dave told me he’d just found a copy of Eastbourne Performance in a charity shop, and also that the 1921 Steinway in the Echo Zoo studio is the very piano Ellington was playing at the Congress that night. Arnie immediately said “why don’t we revisit that album? Build a project around that piano, and that iconic event?” So it started from there really’. 

But hadn’t the original Ellington album been a pretty damp critical squib by the Duke’s standards?

 “I think that reaction should be put into context,’ Arnie Somogyi says. ‘I’ve spoken to one of the trombonists who was on that gig – Vince Prudente, I think he’s the only surviving musician from that concert. He said the band hadn’t had a day off the road for six weeks at that point, it was a tortuous drive down from Preston, they were pretty knackered when they got to Eastbourne, and they weren’t expecting to record. Obviously, the album wasn’t Ellington’s best work, but I think the thing that stood out for me on that record was his piano playing – and also just the idea of taking bits of  the source material from that night and finding beauty within it to create something new. You can always find something, and some of the compositions on our album were inspired by little fragments of Duke’s piano playing, or chord sequences or whatever, just small things that you can find as a starting point for a new narration.’

It isn’t necessary to know exactly how Somogyi and Edwards found their routes to a fresh Ellington homage to appreciate the lyrical elegance and heartfelt jazz wisdom of The Ellington Piano Project – but the background nonetheless provides a fascinating sidebar to how this distinctive venture works. There are three group improvisations spread across the set (‘Prelude’, ‘Interlude’ and ‘It Never Really Ends’), each guided by a single melodic fragment from ‘Mercuria the Lion’, an Ellington piece from the Congress gig that wasn’t included on the first LP release of Eastbourne Performance, but appeared on the subsequent CD. The fast swinger ‘Brake!’, distilled by Somogyi from Ellington’s Eastbourne piano intro to a tune called ‘Woods’, shows how perceptively Gideon Tazelaar, a 28 year-old saxophonist from the Netherlands (now living in New York and studying with the great tenor saxist George Coleman) has absorbed a tenor-sax lineage running from Ellington’s Ben Webster and Paul Gonsalves to John Coltrane and beyond. Tazelaar’s precocious sensitivity to balancing narrative emphasis and canny insinuation is evident here on ‘Black and Tan Fantasy’ and ‘Creole Love Call’. 

Somogyi was introduced on a Netherlands tour to the fast-rising Tazelaar by Sara Oschlag, a UK-resident Danish singer with her own infectious gift for eloquent reinvention of traditional materials. Oschlag joins this venture on three tracks, notably in an exquisitely-paced vocal of subtle swerves and wistfully gliding tones on ‘Don’t You Know I Care’ – originally a Latin-jazz instrumental on Eastbourne Performance, but transformed here by Edwards’ sumptuous intro and Oschlag’s delicately yearning interpretation. 

Considering Somogyi’s and Edwards’ long friendship and musical partnership over the years, it’s intriguing to consider how much was designed and how much emerged in the live process of making this album – as ideas so often did in Duke Ellington’s own work with the musicians he knew and trusted.

‘Well, if you take the three tracks that were freely improvised,’ Somogyi says, ‘each one began with a melodic fragment from Ellington’s “Mercuria”. We used them just as spurs for free impro, did quite a few improvised takes, and then selected what we thought were the best bits. Then there are some newly-composed tracks which again come out of Duke’s playing – one of them is called “A Little Tickle”, from a figure that he plays in the middle of a solo which we worked up into a blues. The overall remit was it had to be an Ellington idea, or related to the Eastbourne album. But it’s interesting that Ellington himself would sometimes freely improvise in his own ways. There are tracks on his trio records, like Piano Reflections, and Piano in the Foreground, that are just free impros, where the trio improvise around maybe just a tonality, and it’s really interesting that he could sort of embrace that genre, but in a very natural way, play freely within his style.’ 

Edwards credits his co-leader in The Ellington Piano Project with a perspective that isn’t so dissimilar. 

‘Arnie’s great at creating tunes from minimal information,’ Edwards says, ‘and the belief that if you put the right people together, and don’t overload it with compositional information, great things can happen. That’s about making a space, an environment where really interactive creative stuff can form. 

 ‘For my part, I just took a couple of things from the Ellington album, and a couple of others of his that were favourites of mine, and tried to bring some fresh light to them. Much of the time what I do is production and arranging, so as we worked up those tunes, certain other sounds seemed to present themselves. Ashley Slater played trombone and trumpet on three tracks, and we used some banjo and marimba to hint at a bit of that 1920s sound the Ellington band had when it used to be The Washingtonians. But I guess above all, I was thinking of Duke’s approach to the piano. In a really interactive, listening band like his, it’s not a restriction to be mainly creating textures and hooks for the others, it’s a freedom. Sometimes to suddenly do something to really drive it, other times  not play at all. With him, it was all about the overview of the thing that he kept in his head all the time, and he would only solo if there was something he could add to the whole that wouldn’t just be about him.’

I mention that conducting from the piano chair is sometimes a description of Ellington’s method, as it is of other pianist/bandleaders in jazz, like Count Basie or Fletcher Henderson – though the constant spontaneity of Duke’s piano-playing in performance, however intricate the score, perhaps makes him the most creative one, and more of an arranger-on-the-fly. 

‘Arranger-on-the-fly, that’s about right,’ Edwards concurs. ‘I always think of that as the piano’s role in jazz, it’s about listening as much as playing. Sometimes you find yourself producing a recording, and a session player comes in, you put on the track you want them to play on, and they just start playing along with it like karaoke. Others will sit and listen and wait, and you know they’re thinking “where’s the gap? What can I do that’s going to add something to this?” In performance, Ellington seemed to have that head on all the time’

Arnie Somogyi, Mark Edwards, and their partners on The Ellington Piano Project: Eastbourne 1973 Reimagined will be bearing those inspirations in mind when they take this adventurous tribute to a musical colossus, and his undaunted final months of live performing, on the road themselves. As writer and musician Simon Spillett observes in this fine album’s sleeve-note, the great jazz master ‘would have found in Edwards, Somogyi, Talezaar, Oschlag and all of the musicians…an adherence to the creative credo that remained constant throughout his five-decade career: that a performer should make a piece their own, shape it as only they can, and leave those listening in no doubt as to who they are’. 

The Ellington Piano Project: Eastbourne 1973 Reimagined is released on Rubicon Jazz. 

Eastbourne’s Congress Theatre hosts a special Ellington in Eastbourne gala on 12 October – BOOKINGS

TOUR DATES

Forsyth’s Music, Manchester, 7 October – BOOKINGS

606 Club, London, 8 October.- BOOKINGS

Eastside Jazz Club, Birmingham, 9 October (lunchtime) – BOOKINGS

Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham, 9 October (eve). – BOOKINGS

Jazz at St Andrew’s, Hove, 10 October.

The Congress Theatre, Eastbourne, 12 October (part of ‘Ellington in Eastbourne’ gala show)