This was Mark Tucker’s third appearance at an Ellington Study Group Conference. His first presentation was at the Chicago conference in 1984 where he talked about The Jungle Music of Duke Ellington and then at Ellington ’96 in Newark where his topic was God’s Trombones.
In Toronto, Tucker’s focus was Ellington’s piano compositions. Under the title Piano in the Foreground, he talked about and played six of them from different periods. The first three are from his youth and ragtime influenced period, then Tucker moves to the 1930’s with its hit songs and then to late 1940’s with an example from the late Carnegie Hall period. He takes pieces of different versions of the Clothed Woman and makes it into The Paradise of the Clothed Woman. Tucker ends his presentation by Retrospection from 1953 but seems to be tempted to play also Introspection.
A presentation not to miss!
Author: Ulf Lundin