Ron Collier ended the afternoon of the second day of the conference with a presentation about his collaboration with Duke Ellington. It was titled Collage, North and South of the Border and focused 0n their compositional and orchestration work together.
I am not sure that Collier talked about their encounter in 1967 when Ellington was engaged to be the solist in a recording of music by modern Canadian composers. Collier was one of them and also conducting the big band and string orchestra, which performed the music.
He might have done it because the beginning of his presentation is missing and the first one hears is Collier talking about a problem between Ellington and the drums during the recording of one piece.
“Three weeks after the recording of North of the Border,” Ellington called Collier and wanted to discuss an issue with the music for the Readers Digest box. Apparently, one can read more about it in the Ron Collier Collection in the University of Toronto Music Library.
The next assignment from Duke that Collier talks about was to go to Mount Angel Abbey next to Portland to help Ellington’s friend Ann Henry with her composition work for the inauguration of the abbey on May 29, 1970. In the presentation, Collier talks about the work to transcribe and arrange what Henry and a friend of hers had composed and a particular episode involving Cootie Williams.
From there he turns to the River. “While I was working on the Mount Angel Abbey thing, Duke contacted me and said that he was working on a ballet called The River. Was I interested ? Of course I said yes and Duke gave a large script to look at.” Listen to the presentation and the music Collier had chosen to play.
From The River Collier moves to Celebration.
The City of Jacksonville was going to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its founding and had commisioned Ellington to write a symphonic piece for the occasion. He asked Collier to help and he agreed of course. What Collier says give an interesting insight into how it was to work with Ellington on a major project. Th symphony is finished and Duke comes into Collier’s room and says we need a galop here. Collier says he protested but gave finally in.
The last episode in the presentation is when – according to Collier – Ruth Ellington called him from Hawaii where Ellington was to get an award and asked Collier to come down with some music. In his presentation, he talks about how he worked with Cootie Williams and Tyree Glenn to get the music together.
However, it seems that Collier mixed up two events. On June 20, 1972, Ellington was in Honolulu to receive an honorary gold card life membership in the American Federation of Musicians union and two days later he was in Toronto, Ontario for a Stockpile redording session.
On the day of Ellington’s death, Collier sat down at the piano and played a little bit for himself to the memory of Duke.
He worked on and off on what he had played and in 1986 the piece finished. Collier ends his presentation by playing a recording of it. Apparently, the original title was The Four Kisses and when a college band recorded it was just called Four Kisses.
Author: Ulf Lundin