Ellington's Spirt Still Strong There was so much music, it took two nights—and all the great jazz musicians that organizer Kenny Burrell could muster—to play it all. But then the cause for celebration was Duke Ellington’s 100th birthday , and nothing else would do.
All-star singers and instrumentalists, many of them from UCLA’s Jazz Studies faculty, followed one after the other onstage to pay tribute and, not incidentally, to provide more than eight hours of first-class musical entertainment.
There were Ellington classics—Take the A Train, It Don’t Mean a Thing If It
Ain’t Got That Swing, Sophisticated Lady, In a Sentimental Mood, Mood Indigo—and
less widely known pieces. On the first night, music was provided by a 16-piece
Big Band and a dozen or more guest soloists. On the second night, the UCLA
Philharmonia Orchestra joined UCLA’s jazz ensembles on stage. And the two concerts were only the core of a week-long festival of Ellingtonia. The UCLA Film and Television Archive showed Ellington movies and TV appearances. The Library put on an exhibit of Ellington materials, and more than 40 photographs taken by well-known Los Angeles photographers were displayed in the Royce Hall lobbies. The life and music of Duke Ellington were discussed in a free scholarly symposium. Composer and jazz scholar Gunther Schuller displayed examples of Ellington’s harmonic originality. Trumpeter Bill Berry, who played with Ellington, described how Ellington used the skills of different band members to achieve subtleties of timber. The only thing missing was the Duke himself, but if he was missed, he was certainly not forgotten.