On May 24th 1974, America bid farewell to her most original, protean, innovative artist / composer: Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington. His oeuvre established an audible charisma; whose extension, elaboration, and refinement of genius transcends the rarefied spirit of musical category and classification.

Reminiscing in Tempo

Culturally, Duke Ellington perceived the constitutional orchestra of American life and transposed her into ambient musical form. Aesthetically, he stylized the idiomatic, twelve-part Blues form derived from a folk art sensibility -- into a fine art of variegated sonority and syncopated self-expression.

Through 50 years and 1,500 compositions, Duke Ellington nourished a musical vision in abeyance of the formalized structures adopted from the masters of traditional European Art Music. The conservatory of the American Negro experience became his onomatopoetic progeny; a nonpareil inspiration for the textural, rhythmic, and sonorous objectification of a free, indefatigable, kinetic, twentieth-century citizenry.

He stands singularly at the threshold of an American musical aristocracy whose thematic exposition and imprimatur continues to resonate with romantic defiance, intelligence, and a willful, impassioned celebration of expressive freedom and vitality.

Diminuendos and Crescendos

The elegance and virtuosity of the Ellington orchestral style was conceived as an invocation to the intimacy and majesty of an indigenous American Art form: The Blues. Through contrast and confluence of oblique voicings, suspended harmonies, and unique combinatorial instrumentation, Edward Kennedy Ellington synthesized a soundscape of incomparable sophistication, tone-color, and sumptuous, dynamic complexity.

Conceptually, Duke Ellington recognized no limitations or boundaries in the creation and articulation of a musical idea. His compositional offerings touched gently upon both the sacred and the profane. Musical settings included churches, concert halls, cinema, speakeasies, funerals, Shakespearean theatre, the paintings of Degas, television, ballets, dance halls, and the geometry of sensual possibilities and escapade.

Essential Ellington

Posthumously, his artistic gestures and aesthetic treatment of the American ethos remain our most comprehensive, compelling and convivial national treasure. He spontaneously choreographed an abiding, universal cultural appeal through uncompromising devotion and commitment to his sui generis, musical repertory.

Duke Ellington: The most accomplished, prolific exponent of a colloquial, American artform has taken his rightful place in the pantheon of musical giants. His legacy speaks in unequivocal terms: amplified virtue in orchestrated form, harmonized in the participatory style of an improvised groove.

Selected Discography

• Piano Reflections
• The Far East Suite
• Ellington Indigos
• The Great Paris Concert
• Blues in Orbit
• Anatomy of a Murder
• The Blanton-Webster Band