Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 11, 1991 TAG: 9102090253
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By TRACIE FELLERS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"One of his sayings is kind of my life's motto, and that is: `You blows what you is,' " says Bond, music director of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra. "I don't think it needs any translating . . . that's why I love it, because it says so succinctly what I believe about music.
"If you have to translate it, you could say you are what you play, or what you play is who you are."
By that definition - or almost any other - Duke Ellington was a skillful pianist and masterful composer and bandleader. But he was more.
He is just as well-remembered for his charming, courtly manner, his polished speech and good looks, his sartorial splendor and an easy elegance that seemed as natural and appropriate as his nickname.
As his legacy, Ellington left not only a significant body of work, including some of America's most treasured jazz tunes, but also his Duke Ellington Orchestra.
The orchestra, which continues to perform under the leadership of Ellington's son, Mercer, will play several concerts in the region this week: Tuesday at 8 p.m. at Covington High School; Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at Virginia Tech's Burruss Auditorium in Blacksburg; and Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center. (See ticket information below.)
Ellington, who died in 1974 at 75, composed music that expressed a uniquely American voice. From the smoky, sonorous "Mood Indigo" to "A Tone Parallel to Harlem (The Harlem Suite)," a longer work with rapidly changing musical images intended to illustrate the many facets of the area he loved, Ellington spoke to and about American life - particularly black American life.
His influence as a jazz musician is enormous. As early as the 1930s, Ellington often was called upon to be a spokesman for the genre.
He looked for and was able to attract gifted musicians with distinctive styles to his band, especially in the '30s, '40s and '50s. Indeed, Ellington may have made his most valuable contributions to American music in the role of band and orchestra leader.
In "Duke Ellington," a 1987 biography, author James Lincoln Collier describes Ellington's innovative use of a rich variety of tones - soft and lush, loud and strident, gritty and growling. Collier also discusses Ellington's keen consciousness of each musician's individual sound and his ability to use specific sounds from his players to create vibrant musical portraits.
Ellington's great influence on music and musicians continues.
Several top musicians in this area recall growing up with Ellington's music. They see him as someone who forged a path they follow, and they acknowledge his enduring genius.
"Certainly Duke Ellington and his music is an inspiration to me as a black musician," says James "Plunky" Branch, a jazz saxophonist who heads his own group, J. Plunky Branch and Oneness. "Though I don't work in the big-band idiom, I'm inspired by his use of the instruments, his sounds. I incorporate some of his music: `Take the A Train,' and `In a Sentimental Mood' are in my repertoire," Branch says.
"He was a trailblazer, and he got recognition for this music called jazz. His treatment of it in a large ensemble took it into the realm of being an art form."
Branch also finds a positive role model in Ellington the man: "He lived and played his music in a way that was very refined. He played before kings and he played at the Apollo; he played for dances and he played in cathedrals."
Ted Taylor, a guitarist with Roanoke jazz band Reflections, considers Ellington "a musical genius. He probably should be compared to a Bach or a Beethoven in classical music - he's that in a jazz genre, in my opinion," Taylor says.
"You can't go on a jam session without playing one or two or four or five Ellington tunes . . . they're standards of standards."
Victoria Bond, who is a composer as well as a conductor, says Ellington's music "has been tremendously influential in my writing." In fact, parts of Bond's "Black Light," a concerto for jazz piano and symphony orchestra, were inspired by Ellington's big-band style, she says.
"One thing I really appreciate about his concept of an ensemble is that he was able to retain the individual freedom of each player within the overall whole of the ensemble," she says. "So you had a great sense of cohesion and precision of ensemble, and yet you had each player able to express his personality musically and individually. That's my idea of the perfect ensemble."
Joe Kennedy Jr., renowned jazz violinist, quartet leader and director of jazz studies of Virginia Tech, says he was raised on Duke Ellington's music.
"I remember listening to the Duke Ellington Orchestra even when I was in elementary school," Kennedy says. "His music was always so unique, different-sounding. He had so many various compositional skills."
Kennedy says he has great appreciation for Ellington's entire body of work, from songs the composer wrote for the dance floor to extended works and sacred concerts. "From early to mid to late, they were all just tremendously rich with his genius."
That's one reason why he included Ellington works on the program when Kennedy and his quartet played at Virginia Tech on Saturday.
Charlie Perkinson, producer and host of WVTF Radio's "All That Jazz," describes Ellington's work as incorporating "a kind of blues influence, a kind of down-and-dirty soul influence, but it had a high polish on top of all that. I think that's why his music is appreciated by so many different people."
Dave Figg of Roanoke has felt Ellington's influence more directly than most people. He spent much of the '40s, '50s and '60s in New York, playing saxophone with Paul Gonsalves, Johnny Hodges and other musicians who had made names for themselves in Ellington's orchestra.
Ellington "broke boundaries that nobody else could have broken, because of his style and grace and poise," Figg says.
Figg attended some of the sacred concerts, Ellington's primary musical efforts in the last decade of his life, in New York. "By the time he got through with one of those church services, it was like a Broadway production," Figg quips.
But the concerts "couldn't have been better received" by their audiences, Figg says. "One person might hear that same music and not have any idea that it was spiritual music, religious music, but for Duke and the other people who were listening to the music, it was holy."
Figg sums it up it briefly and best: "Duke was a special case all the way around - as a person and as a musician.
Tickets for Tuesday's concert at Covington High School in Covington are $15 for adults, $7.50 for students 18 and under. Tickets for Thursday's performanceb at Virgina Tech are $14 for the general public, $11 for Tech faculty and $4 for Tech students. Tickets can be purchased at the Tech Box Office or by phone: Call 231-5615 or 800-843-0332 outside the New River Valley, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekdays. Tickets for Sunday's show at the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center are $18 and $15. Call (804) 296-1900 for more information.
DUKE ELLINGTON ORCHESTRA: Tuesday at 8 p.m. at Covington High School; Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at Virginia Tech's Burruss Auditorium in Blacksburg; and Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center.
by CNB