Listen Magazine: CD 'Duke Ellington: Black, Brown & Beige' on Naxos (2013) is 'Beyond Big Band'

Duke Ellington: Black, Brown, and Beige 

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra 

JoAnn Falletta, Conductor 

Naxos 8.559737 (2013)

Duke Ellington (1899-1974) was a Jazz and Classical Musician who is featured at AfriClassical.com

Listen Magazine
ListenMusicMag.com
Summer 2013

Beyond Big Band

by Bradley Bambarger

This album looks beyond Duke Ellington's big-band masterpieces to his more rarely heard scores arranged for full orchestra, conducted by JoAnn Falletta.  The taster suite here of Black, Brown & Beige - Ellington's epic midcentury tone poem on the African-American experience - has its charms.  Toscanini commissioned the "tone parallel" Harlem, orchestrated by Maurice Peress; this raucous cousin to Rhapsody in Blue fizzes.  Especially valuable is The River, a 1970 score for Alvin Ailey brimming with suave, soulful melodies.  Ellington left another melodic ballet score, Three Black Kings, unfinished at his death, but his son, Mercer, put the finishing touches on it.  The Ellington band's theme song, "Take the 'A' Train," appears as a coda - lush and performed with irresistible verve.