DESS’ Ellinton 125 conference ended some days ago. Göran Wallén and the speakers – Jean Francois Pitet, Bjarne Busk, Samantha Wright, John Haase, Michael Kilpatrick and Marilyn Lester together with the Stockholm All Stars Swing Band made it to a successful conference.
Taave Vahermägi and Göran Axelsson filmed the presentations for DESS and after some editing I will put them on the the website one by one.
The conference started with an informal coming together in the late afternoon of April 28 of the the speakers and some DESS members like Thomas Harne, Bjarne Busk, Jesse Lindgren, Göran Wallén, Jan Bruèr, Anders Asplund, Peter Lee, Jan-Olov Isaksson. Bo Haufman and Lars Björkman.
Hans Backenroth Trio with Samantha Wright as guest artist provided a short but swinging concert. Pity it not was not recorded.
The next day April 29, it was time to start the celebration of Duke Ellington’s 125th birthday with six presentations, which covered a wide range of subjects.
The first man out was Jean-Francois Pitet, member of the Board of Maison du Duke and a specialist on Cab Calloway. He has a Cab Calloway website, which is highly recommended.
He had chosen to talk about the parallell careers of Duke Ellington and Calloway under the title Duke Ellington & Cab Calloway – Musical Connections & Crossovers. He had structed the presentation, from which there was a lo to learn, in five sections.
Jean-Francois Pitet was followed by Bjarne Busk from Copenhagen.
He was very involved in organising the Mercer Ellington donation to Radio Denmark and did more than 50 radio broadcasts with material from the collection. Bjarne has also worked with Storyville Records to issue records with material from Mercer’s donation.
The title of his presentation was The Stock Pile. He talked about how the donation came about and let the audience hear ten stockpile excerpts. They can all be listened to when Bjarne’s full presentation is published on the web site.
The final speaker in the morning was Samantha Wright.
She is a teacher at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater’s jazz department, where she teaches clarinet. She has her own small band with which she tours and records.
The topic of her presentation was Jimmy Hamilton – 25 years with the Duke but she covered also other clarinet players like Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw,
After lunch, John E. Hasse took the floor to speak about Ellington After Ellington.
When we discussed the topic of his presentation, he said he wanted to speak about Ellington from a new perspective and he certainly did. It is a very educational presentation that can be used in many contexts.
He was followed by Mickael Kilpatrick, Ellington researcher, arranger and band leader.
His orchestra Harmony of Harlem gives regular concerts in England and, at the Ellington conference in Paris last year, Laurent Mignard’s Duke Orchestra performed the mythical composition Boola, which Michael had traced together in visits to the Ellington Archive at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. and creative thinking at home.
His presentation at the DESS Ellington 125 was about Ellington compositions from the early 1930’s and was a fascinating walk into Ellington’s compositional technique at the time.
The final presentation was given by Marilyn Lester – Ellington expert, author, theatre critic and much more.
Her topic was Ellington’s Theater. Her reflections on why Ellington never succeeded on Broadway but after his death musicals with his music did were thoughtprovoking.
Unfortunately, time ran out for Marilyn but a full version of her presentation will be published on the website later.
After a long day, it was finally time for the sold out concert with Stockholm Swing All Stars Jazz Band at the Scala Theatre in the center of Stockholm.
Göran Wallén should be pleased with the day.
Author: Ulf Lundin