Sjo To Showcase Ellington’S Work

The Spokane Jazz Orchestra has made Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington’s amazing arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” a December tradition.

This season, in addition to the usual swinging carols and this monumental piece of fun, the SJO is introducing a new wrinkle. They will also be performing the Northwest premiere of Ellington’s arrangement of Grieg’s “Peer Gynt Suite.”

In this case, when I say Ellington, I mean Ellington and his collaborator/orchestrator, Billy Strayhorn. Both men worked on both suites and, as with many of their projects, it is sometimes impossible to determine what part of the work was done by Strayhorn and which contributions were Ellington’s.

Ellington and Strayhorn’s masterful rewriting of the popular Nutcracker Ballet music used Ellington’s band in a chamber music style. The Grieg transcription relies on this same unique concept.

In contrast to many big bands, where each instrumental section would play as a group, Ellington wrote for the individuals in his outfit. By assigning each personality its own voice, he achieved a chamber music sound in a jazz band setting.

In their original forms, the suites Ellington and Strayhorn plundered have many similarities. Both are written by late 19th-century composers known for their nationalism — Tchaikovsky, of course, Russian, and Edvard Grieg, Norwegian. Both pieces are linked to story lines, so are more descriptive of something in particular than abstract music.

The projects came together at about the same time for Ellington and Strayhorn. Their take on the “Peer Gynt Suite” was written shortly after the “Nutcracker” in 1960. They had worked on the “Nutcracker” beginning around January of that year and recorded it in May. It was then discovered that the band had three more recording days at Columbia Studios, so Ellington and Strayhorn hastily pumped out “Peer Gynt.”

The recordings were met with a big question mark. John McLellan of the Boston Traveler wrote, “What esthetic pleasure does Duke find in caricaturing these relative lightweights? For that is what these amount to, really — amusing caricatures of some not very important music.”

There is less interweaving of the two men in “Peer Gynt.” What with the deadline, it appears that they took a piano transcription of Grieg’s music and split the movements down the middle. Grieg originally wrote 21 movements for piano to accompany Henrik Ibsen’s play, then chose eight of those movements to orchestrate for his own two suites. Of those eight, Ellington and Strayhorn chose five for the Ellington band recording.

While extolling the virtues of performing “Peer Gynt,” Walter van de Leur, editor and catalogue manager of the Strayhorn Manuscript Editions library, does note that traces of a hasty job are evident.

He writes that Strayhorn’s “Ase’s Death” and “Solvejg’s Song,” in particular, follow the piano edition of Grieg’s Suites somewhat more strictly and, we presume, less creatively than the more extensive efforts on the “Nutcracker.” Nevertheless, he claims Ellington’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” swings hard, with numerous gorgeously rich passages.

The Spokane Jazz Orchestra is doing a great thing in bringing a live performance of this music to The Met. If you have any interest in jazz, or classical music for that matter, I highly recommend that you check out this sweet, swinging milestone.

This sidebar appeared with story: Spokane Jazz Orchestra When, where: Saturday, 8 p.m. at The Met. Tickets: $19.50 for adults, $17.50 for students/seniors/military, through G&B (325-SEAT, 1-800-325-SEAT or www.ticketswest.com)