The Cambridge Companion to Duke Ellington (Cambridge Companions to Music)

Cambridge University Press, 1/8/2015
EAN 9780521881197, ISBN10: 0521881196

Hardcover, 318 pages, 24.4 x 17 x 1.9 cm
Language: English

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.