A Celebration for the Duke

Duke Ellington was a bandleader and musical director, pianist, in-house composer and arranger for his own big band, he left behind around 2000 works, composed film scores, for revue theatre and show stages, but also for the classical concert hall. He combined jazz with elements of the Western European musical avant-garde of the time as well as the classical-romantic tradition and thus became one of the pioneers of the ‘Third Stream’.

This tribute concert was performed and recorded as part of Musikfest Berlin on 16 September 2024. The program features some of his greatest hits from the big band era as well as compositions from his later creative period such as ‘Night Creature’ and ‘A Tone Parallel to Harlem’: works that made him one of the founders of the ‘Third Stream’, that typically American combination of jazz with elements of European symphonic music and classical modernism.