![]() Which performances and which plays were they so inspired by? Ellington, apparently, a little less so, but my sense of it is that he caught up in the next year.īOGAEV: Okay, so Ellington says at one point that he and Billy Strayhorn sat down and they watched these plays at Stratford and they were really inspired. LANIER: Apparently, this is according to various biographers and other sources, particularly Strayhorn was able to quote passages from Shakespeare. So, he goes to Stratford and the Stratford Festival organizers liked what they heard so they said, “Would you do a piece for us that is linked to Shakespeare?” And Ellington and his writing partner, Billy Strayhorn, were both Shakespearean aficionados and they said, “Yes, we’d love that.” They spent the next half year rereading all the works of Shakespeare and then recorded the project in the spring of ’57, and also gave the first live concert of it in New York Town Hall.īOGAEV: So you said both Billy Strayhorn and Ellington were Shakespeare aficionados. A lot of the music was classical, and that itself is interesting, in that Duke Ellington was, at this time, beginning to be seen as a kind of classical music rather than simply as a jazz performer. He went to Stratford in 1956 as part of a concert series that they were doing. Doug Lanier is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.īARBARA BOGAEV: Well, how did Ellington get hooked up with this Canadian Stratford Festival?ĭOUGLAS LANIER: It’s interesting. We call this podcast I Never Heard So Musical A Discord. Doug is someone with both the musical training and the knowledge of Shakespeare to do justice to this unique work of art. We asked in University of New Hampshire English Professor Douglas Lanier to talk about Such Sweet Thunder because he can do it from a unique perspective. Since its first performance, jazz historians have hailed Such Sweet Thunder as a monumental work that inspired the idea that jazz is America’s classical music. He called the piece Such Sweet Thunder twelve numbers, each linked to a Shakespeare character. After meeting with festival staff, Ellington made an announcement: the following year, he would come back to Stratford and perform a brand new suite of music based on Shakespeare’s characters, plays, and sonnets. In 1956, Ellington, and his arranger, Billy Strayhorn, were performing in Ontario, Canada, home of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival. The artist we’re talking about is the great Duke Ellington. ![]() I’m Michael Witmore, the Folger’s director. “I am the Shakespeare of Jazz.” And sometimes, history decides that the artist is right.įrom the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. “Who, me?” But sometimes an artist takes the mantle and embraces it. Normally, the artist will just brush off the idea. MICHAEL WITMORE: In pretty much every generation, there’ll be someone who’s declared “The Shakespeare of Whatever”-usually whichever art form is most popular at the time. Previous: The ABCs of Performing Hamlet | Next: Olivia Hussey: The Girl on the Balcony They were originally recorded for the Shakespeare In American Life public radio documentary. Actors Morgan Duncan and Craig Wallace recreate the minstrel performance in this episode. We had technical help from Jennifer Swiatek and Phil Richards at KCRW public radio in Santa Monica, California. This episode, “I Never Heard So Musical A Discord,” was produced by Richard Paul. Read Lanier’s essay, “Jazzing Up Shakespeare,” on our Shakespeare & Beyond blog.įrom the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. ![]() He wrote about Ellington’s Such Sweet Thunder for our 2007 exhibition, Shakespeare in American Life. Lanier, who is also a musician, has written widely about Shakespeare and modern popular culture (in fact, that’s the name of his 2002 book: Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture), and is an expert on pop adaptations of Shakespeare’s works. We talked with University of New Hampshire Professor of English Douglas Lanier about the suite, the second chapter of Ellington’s career, and how they reflect shifting cultural perceptions of jazz. A year later, Duke Ellington premiered and recorded Such Sweet Thunder, a suite of twelve tunes inspired by the Bard and his characters. Afterward, festival staff asked the legendary composer-at that point, one of jazz’s elder statesmen-if he’d consider writing a piece about Shakespeare. In 1956, Duke Ellington gave a series of concerts at Ontario, Canada’s Stratford Festival. ![]()
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