Word: ellington
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...shuns labels for his polystylistic music--particularly fusion, a term he feels has "nothing but negative connotations"--preferring to describe it as jazz, pure and simple. "Jazz is the all-inclusive form," he explains. "There's room for everybody, for anything of true musical substance. Jazz guys like Duke Ellington or Miles Davis have always transformed the elements of the pop culture that surrounds us into something more sophisticated and hipper. It's their...
Nineteen ninety-nine was a big year for memorials. Humphrey Bogart, Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire and Noel Coward, among others, would have been 100, Pushkin 200, and it was International Chopin Year, marking the 150th anniversary of the composer's death. While some were celebrated reverentially, others received more bizarre treatments...
...poking fun to ensure that all had a good time. The program was obviously not chosen to display the works of Mozart, Dvorak and Debussy, but rather to draw all types of people together in search of the audience's enjoyment. As Lockhart remarked prior to playing Duke Ellington's jazzy rendition of the Nutcracker, "This is like nothing that you have ever heard before." And he was right. Ellington's take on the "Sugar Plum Fairy," renamed "Sugar-Rum Cherry," was a superbly performed combination of sultry saxophone, drums and strings that left the audience amazed...
Anyone assembling a roster of artistic types who shaped the 20th century aesthetic could do worse than a team comprising Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, Ernest Hemingway, Alfred Hitchcock and Noel Coward. Through some unlikely alignment of the planets, all five were born in the last eight months of 1899, and thus have all been celebrated in this centennial-sodden year...
DIED. CHARLES THOMAS, 64, jazz pianist who played with Duke Ellington and Tony Bennett; of prostate cancer; in Little Rock, Ark. Thomas turned down an offer to fill in for the Duke permanently after his death, in favor of playing small clubs in his home state of Arkansas...