“Somebody said they want us to do ‘A Train’ again,” Paul Mercer Ellington, the musical director of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, reported just before 11 a.m. on Wednesday.
And why not? A full 27 minutes had passed since the orchestra’s last performance of his grandfather’s signature song, a song some Ellington fans cannot hear too often. Wednesday was, after all, the 110th anniversary of Duke Ellington’s birth, and the orchestra was ready to celebrate.
But A. C. Lichtenstein, the orchestra’s manager, blinked. “Can we do it without a piano?” he asked Mr. Ellington.
For once, they had to. They were standing on the platform of the 125th Street subway station at St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, about to board an A train — and perform — as the train sped toward the other end of the line, in Queens, picking up regular passengers along the way. There was no way to take a piano along, though they had used a Steinway grand earlier, up on the concourse.
So much for the opening bars of a song that began with Ellington’s scribbled-out directions to his apartment, given to a young composer and arranger named Billy Strayhorn. “I turned them into something,” Strayhorn said later, and he and Ellington began a collaboration that lasted until Strayhorn died in 1967.
This time, the A train was not just any A train, but one made up of cars about as old as the song, which was written in 1939 but not performed until a couple of years later.
And why not? A full 27 minutes had passed since the orchestra’s last performance of his grandfather’s signature song, a song some Ellington fans cannot hear too often. Wednesday was, after all, the 110th anniversary of Duke Ellington’s birth, and the orchestra was ready to celebrate.
But A. C. Lichtenstein, the orchestra’s manager, blinked. “Can we do it without a piano?” he asked Mr. Ellington.
For once, they had to. They were standing on the platform of the 125th Street subway station at St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, about to board an A train — and perform — as the train sped toward the other end of the line, in Queens, picking up regular passengers along the way. There was no way to take a piano along, though they had used a Steinway grand earlier, up on the concourse.
So much for the opening bars of a song that began with Ellington’s scribbled-out directions to his apartment, given to a young composer and arranger named Billy Strayhorn. “I turned them into something,” Strayhorn said later, and he and Ellington began a collaboration that lasted until Strayhorn died in 1967.
This time, the A train was not just any A train, but one made up of cars about as old as the song, which was written in 1939 but not performed until a couple of years later.
