/ARTS-ENTERTAINMENT/ MUSIC-US: Celebrating The Duke’s Centennial

By Kerstin Marx and Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, May 4 1999 (IPS) - Edward Kennedy Ellington, the elegant jazz composer and pianist known as ‘the Duke’, produced so much of the best US music of the twentieth century that it is fitting that the century’s end includes a commemoration of his work.

US classical and jazz musicians alike have began a seres of performances and restrospectives of Ellington’s work to honour the 100th anniversary of his birth on Apr. 29, 1899. The trubutes are scheduled to continue through the end of the year.

By the time Duke Ellington died in 1974, he had written more than 1,500 compositions, ranging from three-minute pop ditties like ‘Take the A Train’, the theme song of his big band, to an entire, rarely-performed suite dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.

“Ellington is our Shakespeare, Goethe, and Cezanne,” says Rob Gibson, executive producer and director of Jazz at Lincoln Centre, which showcases jazz compositions at New York’s most prestigious musical venue.

Jazz at Lincoln Centre will celebrate ‘The Ellington Centennial’ with more than 400 concerts, lectures, films and educational programmes.

Recently, the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra, conducted by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, joining forces with classical conductor Kurt Masur to present both Edvard Grieg’s ‘Peer Gynt’ suite and Ellington’s jazzy variations on the composition.

The contrast showed both how Ellington borrowed from symphonic forms and departed from them to make his own musical language.

To mark the 100 years since Ellingtons birth, the organisation brought together 500 high school jazz musicians from all over the nation last month for the fourth annual ‘Essential Ellington’ High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival.

Other events scheduled by Lincoln Centre include collaborations with the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, the Juilliard School, and the Film Society of Lincoln Centre.

The Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra also will perform concerts and lead educational programmes in more than 50 cities throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. In so doing, the orchestra will “illuminate why (Ellington’s) artistic development was one of the most spectacular in the history of music,” says Marsalis.

“We hope that audiences will understand exactly why Duke Ellington was one of the most gifted musicians who ever lived,” Marsalis argues.

Jazz experts have no doubts that Ellington was one of the foremost jazz composers, if not the major US composer of the century, for his vast range of works – from short pop songs like ‘Take the A Train’ and ‘Satin Doll’ to later symphonic works like ‘Black, Brown and Beige’ and ‘Harlem’.

Born in 1899 in Washington, D.C., Ellington composed between 1,500 and 2,000 works and at least five times as many recordings during his lifetime: music for the ballroom, the comedy stage, the nightclub, the theatre, the concert hall and the cathedral.

In late 1917, Ellington formed his first group, ‘The Duke’s Serenaders’. Afterward, he ran his own big band for almost 60 years, until his death in 1974.

“I regard my entire orchestra as one large instrument, and I try to play on that instrument to the fullest capabilities,” Ellington wrote in 1942. “My aim is and has always been to mold the music around the man.”

Ellington’s big band boasted many distinct individual voices, from the growling trumpets of Bubber Miley and Cootie Williams to the elegant saxophone of Johnny Hodges. Guest vocalists like jazz diva Ella Fitzgerald also lent their talents to the Ellington band over the years.

At the centre was Ellington, whose distinct compositional gestures coaxed a diverse array of sounds from his band, from stomping, horn-based romps to quiet woodwinds and the subtle accompaniment of Ellington’s own piano playing.

Few jazz bandleaders offered as rich a range of tones as that of the dapper, sophisticated composer known as ‘the Duke’.

Many of Ellington’s best-loved works arose from the close collaboration between the bandleaders and the members of his orchestra, many of whom came to live near each other – in New York’s Harlem neighbourhood – for most of their lives.

‘Take the A Train’, adopted as Ellington’s signature song from 1941 until the end of his life, was a case in point. The song was actually written by young arranger Billy Strayhorn as he rode the ‘A’ train subway to Harlem – following Duke’s directions – on his way to try to secure a job with the group. Ellington liked the song, and hired Strayhorn on the spot.

Other songs reflected Ellington’s desire to spotlight individual group members, such as ‘Concerto for Cootie’, a rousing number featuring the growling style of Cootie Williams.

Although Ellington received his greatest fame for his big-band tunes of the 1930s and 1940s, he continued to write innovative longer pieces – such as ‘Such Sweet Thunder’, a near-symphony based on Shakespeare’s ouevre – and to work with the top jazz talents of later eras, including singer Frank Sinatra and saxophonist John Coltrane.

Marsalis likes to point to Ellington’s big band as a dramatic example of a successful musical democracy, incorporating individual talents in a group effort. That jazz democracy, now in its second century, is still going strong.