Ellingtonia „The Homage to Duke Ellington"

In the 1oo-plus years since jazz was born, there have been two artists whose contributions to the music have made them, unassailably, the most significant and influential of all - Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. As Leonard Feather once observed, "Duke is to composed and orchestrated jazz what Louis Armstrong is to jazz improvisation. "This album, which features some of the classic compositions from the vast Ducal pantheon, is released in celebration of the centenary of Edward Kennedy Ellington, who was born in Washington D.C on April 29, 1899 and died in New York on May 24, 1974.

Ellington’s creative output, which began in 1917 when he made his professional debut and continued up to within a few weeks of his death, was simply staggering. Between November 1924 and February 1974 he recorded more than 2 000 compositions, for the vast majority of which he could claim composer and arranger credits. In his book, The Swing Era, published in 1989, Gunther Schuller concluded his extensive chapter on Duke Ellington by saying: "...in twentieth-century music, he may yet one day be recognized as one of the half-dozen greatest masters of our time."

For every big band, the fine-tuning between the art of soloing and the craft of collective playing is the ultimate measure. Dieter Glawischnig and the NDR-BigBand have continually rediscovered Duke Ellington’s music and in the process, invited such wellknown arrangers as Joki Freund, Francy Boland, Robert Lamb and Steve Gray to participate in the exploration. Motivated by Heinz Sauer’s prize-winning album, Ellingtonia Revisited, the NDR BigBand went into the studio in September and October of 1984 with Sauer on Tenor and Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko. Five pieces on the present CD come from these sessions. Another - "Caravan" - was undertaken with Sauer and trombonist Slide Hampton. The 90s have seen a continuation of Ellingtonia included in the NDR BigBand’s concert schedule. The Ellington medley represents the NDR BigBand’s first collaboration with master-arranger Arif Mardin.

The NDR BigBand’s latest high point was their celebrated concert in New York, where they performed Steve Gray’s arrangement, "Diminuendo, Crescendo and Crescendissimo in Blue", a homage to Ellington’s legendary concert at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. Duke Ellington kept his band constantly working, playing in all manner of venues, from small nightclubs to giant cathedrals; he was tirelessly in search of new possibilities and stayed in the musical forefront throughout his Iife. The NDR BigBand continues this great Ellington legacy and this album, with its enterprising arrangements, its range of moods and tone colours, its outstanding soloists and section men is a most worthy tribute to the greatest jazz composer who ever lived.