One of the surprises on the last day of Ellington ’94 was a presentation by Luciano Massagli and Giovanni Volonté of what was to become NDESOR – the totally indispensable tool for any serious Ellington collector.
They were not in the original program but asked for a slot only a couple of weeks before the conference and – of course -the organizers was happy to give them one.
So the last day of the conference started started a little bit earlier than originally scheduled to accomodate their half an hour presentation.
As can be seen and heard in the video below, Massagli talked about what NDESOR would be like and Volonté presented the just published book “Duke Ellington : un genio, un mito”, which he had written together with Antonio Berini.
A 12 page handout about the 740 page book was provided to the conference participants. It gives an overview of the chapters of the book plus the foreword by Leonard Feather and the introduction by the authors. It is available in the Ellington Archive.