Ellington ’89 in Washington D.C. (1)

In mid-October last year, the DESS website presented the first Ellington Study Group Conference, which took place in Washington D.C. in May 1983.

Six years later the conference was back in Washington D.C. – this time on the occasion of Ellington’s 90th birthday.

Early next month. we will publish some articles about the conference. We have quite a lot of video tapes with presentations as a basis for this, but we are still looking for photos, personal memories etc, to give a more full picture. Please contact the web editor if you have material to contribute.

However, to give you a taste of the conference, we already publish today some excerpts from the conference proceedings.

Herb Jeffries was one of the invited guest to perform at the conference and tell about his time with Ellington. He got a very special honor.

On two nights of the conference,  Doug Richard’s and his Great American Music Ensemble presented Ellington’s music from the 1920’s to the 1950’s.

One of the presenter’s the last day was Sjef Hoefsmit and his lecture on “Ellington’s Trains” should not be missed.