Michael Kilpatrick – baritone saxophonist and orchestra leader – was one of the speakers on the second day of Ellington 2021.
He is also a recognized transcriber of Duke Ellington’s and Billy Strayhorn’s music. For this work, he has spent long periods at the Smithsonian’s Ellington Archive, Washington D.C., to go through the boxes there with musical scores by the hands of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
In conjunction with the cancelled Ellington 2020 Conference, Michael spent another 10 days in the Ellington Archive and returned home with more than 3000 pages of scores.
Together with his partner Sibelius – the music notation software – Michael has spent the last year to making sense of what he found in the Ellington Archive and in his presentation, Michael took the audience on a terrific exploration on how to turn fragments of Duke Ellington scores into a full musical piece.
After all the presentation on the second day when everybody was relaxing, Michael provided another “goodie” to the participants in the meeting – a short extract of Nobody’s Baby Now.