Duke Ellington

Composer, bandleader, and pianist, Born Edward Kennedy Ellington in Washington, D.C., Ellington developed his keyboard skills by listening to local anesthetic black ragtime pianists; he composed his first piece, restorative Fountain Rag, around 1915. A successful professional participant by the early 1920s, he left Washington in the spring of 1923 for New York, which was his home base for the rest of his life. amid December 1927 and 1931 his orchestra held forth at Harlems Cotton Club, where regular wireless broadcasts, together with an active recording schedule, helped him establish a comprehensive reputation.

In such compositions as Black and Tan Fantasy (1927), musical mode Indigo (1930), Solitude (1934), and Echoes of Harlem (1935), Ellington emerged as a distinctive composer for his ensemble, employing the rhythms, harmonies, and timbre colors of jazz to create pieces that vividly captured aspects of the African-American experience. At the same time he sought to broaden jazzs expressive range and formal boundaries in such extended whole kit and caboodle as Reminiscing in Tempo (1935), Black, Brown, and Beige (1943), and Harlem (1951).

An essential get of Ellingtons composing method was to write with specific instrumentalists in mind, a good deal drawing them into the creative process by building constitutional pieces out of their musical ideas.



This practice began in the 1920s, with Ellington drawing ecstasy from such players as saxophonists Johnny Hodges and Otto Hardwick, trumpeters Bubber Miley and Cootie Williams, and trombonist Joseph Nanton. some other important contributor to the Ellington orchestras sonic identity was the composer and arranger baton Strayhorn, who worked closely with Ellington from 1939 until his death in 1967. Strayhorn was responsible for the bands famous theme, relegate the A Train (1941), and in later years collaborated with Ellington on such projects as Such Sweet Thunder (1957) and the furthest East Suite (1966).

During the 1930s Ellington began the...

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