Word: ellington
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Based on the music of Duke Ellington...
...energy is being released at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theater, but no one need fear anything more drastic than delight. Sophisticated Ladies has no book and seems not to need one. It relies on incendiary dancing, notably tap, an onstage Big Band blast under the baton of Duke Ellington's son Mercer, and some 36 of the Duke's tunes of seductive genius...
...link between Ellington and his genius is Gregory Hines, a supernova of a performer with formidable gifts. Whether he is dancing, singing or flaying and feathering the drums, Hines has a sly, unaffected good humor that winningly permeates the evening and the show...
...amount of professional proficiency alone enables a musical to take wing and make a chairbound audience irresistibly airborne. The X factor, and Sophisticated Ladies has it, is mood. All of Ellington's music is mood music, and its components are inescapably urban, elegant, nocturnal and just a trifle snobbish. Ellington is as close as possible to being Noel Coward's twin...
DIED. Russell Procope, 72, dapper, goateed jazz clarinetist and saxophonist who was a fixture in the Duke Ellington Orchestra; in New York City. After playing with Chick Webb, Fletcher Henderson and the John Kirby Sextet, Procope joined the Duke in 1945, bringing his low, mellow sound to such Ellington compositions as 4:30 Blues and Swamp...