Format : Sheet music + CD
SKU: AP.47030S
UPC: 038081540375. English.
This chart swings! A sensational chart that captures the collaboration of Ellington and Strayhorn, played around 130 BPM. Lead trumpet plays to written A with optional high C. Solos written out for trombone, alto, trumpet, and tenor. Great use of plunger mutes for trumpets. Excellent chart in every way!
SKU: AP.46155S
ISBN 9781470665401. UPC: 038081524238. English.
Oh yeah, a beautiful straight-eighth Ellington ballad. Played around 84 BPM with gorgeous voicings throughout, written-out solos for tenor and trombone, very easy brass ranges, all the usual optional parts to include vibes. Very playable, very satisfying! (3:30).
SKU: HL.49047362
ISBN 9798350124842. UPC: 196288207597.
The choice of 16th century texts, by Bronzino and Battiferri, reflects the interests of the dedicatee of these sonnets - Craig Hugh Smyth, a fine art historian and former director of the Villa I Tatti, who was a specialist in Bronzino and Pontormo. Bronzino's sonnet is a lament on the death of Pontormo, his teacher; Laura Battiferri's poem is a direct response to that of Bronzino. As I was also asked to set sonnets by Petrarca, I chose two of his closely linked sonnets, numbers 229 and 230 in the Rime Sparse. I had written a work for I Tatti some five years earlier setting Petrarca (â??A qualunque animaleâ?, the first in my Fourth Book of Madrigals) and was familiar with the context. However, through correspondence with Kathryn Bosi, Music Librarian at I Tatti and, through her, Craig Smyth's family, I became increasingly aware of his unusual and quite special character. From his undergraduate days at Princeton and indeed throughout his life, although a great scholar and writer, he was at the same time an aficionado of jazz, loving above all Louis Armstrong, being photographed with Duke Ellington, taking his children to see Thelonious Monk, listening to Ben Webster and playing the tenor saxophone himself. Indeed, he had told Kathryn Bosi that he had been proud to walk in procession at the funerals of black musicians in New Orleans. In some ways his life was almost an obverse mirror image of parts of my own - I was a professional jazz musician but found myself teaching art history for a time. As Fiorella Superbi of I Tatti has said: Craig was a maestro di vita. I raise a glass in his memory and dedicate these sonnets to him. Gavin Bryars.
SKU: PE.EP68488A
ISBN 9790300758909. English.
At the end of 1938, Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941) returned to New York from his years in Washington, D.C. Recent publicity had made a comeback seem possible, and he hoped to recapture the prominent place in the jazz world that he had held in the 1920s. Still well known, though mainly as a New Orleans music pioneer, he understood that in order to be taken seriously as a contemporary artist, he needed to form a big band like those of his competition, such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. In the 1920s Morton's recordings and tours featured a ten-piece band following the first-generation big-band format. But in the late 1930s, larger groups were popular, so Morton assembled a conventional '30s band consisting of four saxophones, six brass, and four rhythm. The band was to open at the Golden Gate Ballroom in Harlem on April 17th, 1939, but on opening night Morton collapsed before going onstage. During his recuperation from the asthma and heart problems that dogged him, the band broke up, never to reassemble. Only six items written for that band's instrumentation are known to exist: Morton's arrangements of his own compositions -- Finger Breaker, GanJam, Good Old New York, Mister Joe, and Stop and Go -- and an arrangement, Mamies' Blues, by another artist. -- James Dapogny (Editor)
As an editor, Dapogny shows his customary sound musical scholarship and deep knowledge of Morton's style....The publishers are to be congratulated for bringing this fascinating work into the public domain, which throws a totally new light on 'Mister Jelly Lord.' Who knows what he would have achieved had he lived beyond his alleged 51 years? --Martin Litton, for JUST JAZZ (Feb 2011)
SKU: PE.EP68488
ISBN 9790300758893. English.
As an editor, Dapogny shows his customary sound musical scholarship and deep knowledge of Morton's style....The publishers are to be congratulated for bringing this fascinating work into the public domain, which throws a totally new light on 'Mister Jelly Lord.' Who knows what he would have achieved had he lived beyond his alleged 51 years?--Martin Litton, for JUST JAZZ (Feb 2011)
SKU: KN.05350S
UPC: 822795053500.
Used as the signature tune of the Ellington Orchestra, the title of this great standard refers to the New York City subway line that young Billy Strayhorn took into Harlem's Sugar Hill district in 1938 when Duke hired him to write for his band. Featuring a traditional bright swing groove and an open solo section, this version will delight audiences of all ages. Rhythm section parts are partially notated with chords cued.
