2023-04-27 20:00:10
During a career that spanned the early 1920s through the 1970s, Edward Kennedy Ellington (1899-1974), known as “Duke” Ellington, wrote “more than a thousand compositions”, recalls the trumpeter, composer and conductor Laurent Mignard. The authoritative site Ellingtonia.com even lists some 1,300 which were recorded by the pianist and his musicians – and almost as many arrangements by Ellington of works by other composers.
Melodies signed Ellington or Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967), his collaborator, friend and alter ego, which entered the history of jazz, and more generally of music (including It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing), Sophisticated Lady, In a Sentimental Mood, Satin Doll, Take the “A” Train…), to ambitious orchestral suites (Liberian Suite, Such Sweet Thunder, Far East Suite…), passing through dancing fantasies or sacred music, adaptations of standards, popular hits, classical music…
Ellington is “the most beautiful music of a large jazz orchestra that can be found”adds Mignard, whose Duke Orchestra is, since its creation twenty years ago, totally devoted to the Ellingtonian work, “by respecting the writing, the arrangements, but not by being content to be a frozen museum”. A living heritage played by interpreters with varied identities, sounds, phrasings and backgrounds, but united within the orchestra to serve the spirit as much as the letter of Ellington.
Long transcription work by ear
This art of interpretation, in the humility to follow in the footsteps of those for whom Ellington wrote, was born in May 2003, with a commission from the Jazz festival in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the recreation of the Second Sacred Concert in the same church of Saint-Sulpice, in Paris, where this suite of religious inspiration had been played in November 1969. For Mignard, it was a long work of transcription by ear of the various movements and soloist interventions, from the recording made by Ellington and his orchestra in New York, in January and February 1968.
Since then, the Duke Orchestra has included nearly one hundred and fifty compositions by Ellington in its repertoire, has given many concerts, “best of” hits or themes (Ellington and France, Ellington and women…), has recorded several albums . And, for his 20th birthday, “honor and pride” to create a previously unreleased piece by Ellington, titled The holewhich will be performed at the Bal Blomet, in Paris, on Saturday April 29, in addition to other themes by the master.
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