The Cambridge Companion to Duke Ellington

This comprehensive and accessible Companion is the first collection of essays to provide an in-depth overview of Ellington's career.

Edward Green (Edited by)

9780521881197, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 January 2015

318 pages, 2 b/w illus. 53 music examples
25.3 x 18 x 1.9 cm, 0.78 kg

'This Cambridge Companion helps the reader see two divide-and-conquer approaches to his artistic oeuvre: by decade, and by genres such as suites, songs, and the blues. Elling-tonians and professors will read this book from cover to cover, and students needing material for jazz term papers will be thankful for the analyses of individual pieces that are embedded in some of the essays.' Edward Komara, Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association

Duke Ellington is widely held to be the greatest jazz composer and one of the most significant cultural icons of the twentieth century. This comprehensive and accessible Companion is the first collection of essays to survey, in depth, Ellington's career, music, and place in popular culture. An international cast of authors includes renowned scholars, critics, composers, and jazz musicians. Organized in three parts, the Companion first sets Ellington's life and work in context, providing new information about his formative years, method of composing, interactions with other musicians, and activities abroad; its second part gives a complete artistic biography of Ellington; and the final section is a series of specific musical studies, including chapters on Ellington and song-writing, the jazz piano, descriptive music, and the blues. Featuring a chronology of the composer's life and major recordings, this book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Ellington's enduring artistic legacy.

Chronology Evan Spring
Editor's introduction: Ellington and Aesthetic Realism Edward Green
Part I. Ellington in Context: 1. Artful entertainment: Ellington's formative years in context John Howland
2. The process of becoming: composition and recomposition David Berger
3. Conductor of music and men: Duke Ellington through the eyes of his nephew Stephen D. James and J. Walker James
4. Ellington abroad Brian Priestley
5. Edward Kennedy Ellington as a cultural icon Olly W. Wilson and Trevor Weston
Part II. Duke Through the Decades: The Music and Its Reception: 6. Ellington's afro-modernist vision in the 1920s Jeffrey Magee
7. Survival, adaptation and experimentation: Duke Ellington and his orchestra in the 1930s Andrew Berish
8. The 1940s: The Blanton–Webster Band, Carnegie Hall, and the challenge of the postwar era Anna Harwell Celenza
9. Duke in the 1950s: renaissance man Anthony Brown
10. Ellington in the 1960s and 1970s: triumph and tragedy Dan Morgenstern
Part III. Ellington and the Jazz Tradition: 11. Ellington and the blues Benjamin Givan
12. 'Seldom seen, but always heard': Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington Walter van de Leur
13. Duke Ellington and the world of jazz piano Bill Dobbins
14. Duke and descriptive music Marcello Piras
15. Sing a song of Ellington, or, the accidental songwriter Will Friedwald
16. The land of suites: Ellington and extended form David Berger
17. Duke Ellington's legacy and influence Benjamin Bierman.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH], Theory of music & musicology [AVA]