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Ellington 2021 – Jack Chambers
Jack Chambers was also among the presenters on the fourth and last day of Ellington 2021.
He is currently in the early stages of working on another book on Ellington and had chosen to give the participants in Ellington 2021 a snapshot of one of the chapters in the forthcoming book.
His presentation focused particularily on Wild Bill Davis’ and Ron Collier’s work as arrangers for Ellington in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Ellington 2021 – Brian Priestley
Brian is a man full of knowledge about jazz and among other things about Duke Ellington. When he was asked to make a presentation to Ellington 2021, he thought a lot about it and finally said: “Yes, I like to do one and it will be about Duke Ellington’s Sound of Africa”.
But the title was developed into a multifaceted presentation, in which Brian in a very pedagogical way highlighted Ellington’s musical approach in the the five Ellington recordings he played in his presentation.
At the end, Brian said: .”Maybe you will listen more carefully to some of these things” and he certainly challenged wth his presentation to do so!
At one point in the presentation, Brian referred to an article in “an upcoming issue of Blue Light”. Since Ellington 2021, the issue has been published and all DESUK members can read “Keys to the Kingdom”. Brian says it is a “reseach in progress” and it has quite some links to his presentation.
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Ellington 2021 – Michael Kilpatrick
Michael Kilpatrick – baritone saxophonist and orchestra leader – was one of the speakers on the second day of Ellington 2021.
He is also a recognized transcriber of Duke Ellington’s and Billy Strayhorn’s music. For this work, he has spent long periods at the Smithsonian’s Ellington Archive, Washington D.C., to go through the boxes there with musical scores by the hands of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
In conjunction with the cancelled Ellington 2020 Conference, Michael spent another 10 days in the Ellington Archive and returned home with more than 3000 pages of scores.
Together with his partner Sibelius – the music notation software – Michael has spent the last year to making sense of what he found in the Ellington Archive and in his presentation, Michael took the audience on a terrific exploration on how to turn fragments of Duke Ellington scores into a full musical piece.
After all the presentation on the second day when everybody was relaxing, Michael provided another “goodie” to the participants in the meeting – a short extract of Nobody’s Baby Now.
Ellington 2021 – Loren Schoenberg
Loren Schoenberg – founder of and senior scholar at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem – provided the first presentation on the third day of Ellington 2021. He is also a pillar in the international Ellington community as well as in the Benny Goodman one and is a terrific expert on big band jazz.
He had hinted to the Ellington 2021 organizers that he might talk about something different than in the program but when he announced that he was going to talk about the Barney Bigard small group recordings in the 1940’s, everybody was happy. They realized that they were in for an interesting talk. And that was what Loren delivered!
For those interested in other presentations by Loren, the YouTube channel of The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is highly recommended as is his lectures at Jazz At Lincoln Center’s Swing University.
Biographical information about Loren is available in Wikipedia and in a faculty profile at the Juilliard School website.
Ellington 2021 – Marilyn Lester
Marilyn Lester ended the second day of Ellington 2021 with a presentation on Ellington and The Great American Songbook.
It is a topic she knows very well thanks to her background as a critic/reviewer and writer on jazz, cabaret, popular music and theater and she demonstrated this very well in her detailed and thoughtful presentation.
Her broad knowledge has made her an associate editor of the American Popular Song Society newsletter in additon to being the editor of the Duke Ellington Society of New York newsletter.
As a person full of energy and ideas, she is currently also working on several theater projects and two films in development.
In addition, Marilyn is an active member of the international Ellington community and helped to prepare Ellington 2021 as member of the Advisory Program Group.
Ellington 2021 – Ken Steiner
Ken Steiner has contributed to many Ellington Conferences – Stockholm, London, Amsterdam, Portland, New York, and was scheduled for a presentation at last year’s conference in DC.
This time, his task was to present the Never-Issued Rarities, which Steven Lasker had generously made available for Ellington 2021. Ken handled the job in an elegant and humorous way.
The presentation triggered many comments in the chat room including many thanks to Steven Lasker for letting the Ellington 2021 participants listen to the seven rarities . The comments can be read here.
Ken first fell under the spell of Duke Ellington’s music when he heard Duke in concert at Georgetown University on February 10, 1974. He’s been researching Ellington ever since.
Ellington 2021 – David Berger
Day #2 of Ellington 2021 took place on May 3rd. The program is available here.
David Berger opened the day with his presentation Flaming Youth: Ellington’s 1920 Compositions. For more than an hour, he guided the meeting participants through East St. Louis Toodle-oo and Old Man Blues with the scores and the music provided in parallell.
The presentation was really a preview of what one can expect to find in five-volume book series on Ellington’s music that David is currently working on. Each volume will include analyses of 8-10 scores (https://www.suchsweetthundermusic.com/pages/the-ellington-effect). The first volume is expected to be published this year.
More previews are available in the Zoom workshops David is organizing every month (https://courses.suchsweetthundermusic.com).
Ellington 2021 – Bent Persson
Bent Persson – Swedish trumper, arranger and transciber – did the last presentation of the first day of Ellington 2021. He talked about Kustbandet – 60 Years with Ellington.
As a member of the orchestra for almost 40 years, Bent knows about it and demonstrated this in his presentation. He had selected musical examples from the late 1960’s to the early 21st century with a particular emphasis on Kustbandet’s appearance in Paris in 1984.
Learn more about Bent at http://www.bentpersson.se and about Kustbandet at http://www.kustbandet.se. Listen also to both of them on YouTube.
Ellington 2021 – Samantha Wright
She is a British jazz clarinet player and researcher and a jazz clarinet teacher at Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg since 2019.
Her 2019 thesis was on Ellington’s clarinetists and she expanded on it in her presentation Ellington’s Clarinet Players.
Learn more about Samantha at http://www.samanthawright.co.uk.
Among other things, there is a link to her blog Jazz Clarinet Players, which has a recent post with the scores to the music she played in her presentation.
Samantha is also composing and arranging for her own ensemble.
Her debut album is released with a concert on Hamburg Stream on Sunday 23 May at 20:25 CEST. It will be streamed on YouTube. All information about it can be found here https://hamburg.stream/samantha-wright/
Ellington 2021 – Leïla Olivesi
LeÏla Olivesi – pianist, composer, band leader and lecturer at meetings of Le Maison du Duke – followed John E Hasse on the first day of Ellington 2021. Her talk was about Ellington’s Piano Performances : A Laboratory for Composition.
Learn more about her at http://www.leilaolivesi.com.