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The Sacred Concerts of Duke Ellington
| Article
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12287 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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1 / 1987 |
2,737 Words |
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Tom Pniewski
Tom Pniewski is a musicologist at Hunter College in New York. |
This music is the most important thing I've ever done or am likely to do. This is personal, not career. Now I can say out loud to all the world what I've been saying to myself for years on my knees.
- Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
Duke Ellington the jazz man is a world figure; Duke Ellington the churchman is almost unknown. Ellington the Elegant, the companion of kings and presidents, is familiar from the countless records, films, and photographs that document his glamorous life. Ellington the devout was shielded from public view.
Yet both Ellingtons were real - or rather, both were one very real man. Without making a show of the practice of religion, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was as sincere and committed in his religious beliefs as he was in his playing. And at the end of his life, in the last ten years, he was able to fuse these two forces in the forging of magnificent religious music - the three Sacred Concerts, which evidence a unique unity of jazz and devotion.
Audiences were surprised, to say the least, at this coupling. The thousands who jammed into churches around the world - San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, New York's St. John the Divine, London's Westminster Abbey, Paris' St. Sulpice, and dozens more - always did a double take at the sight of Ellington's classic "Big Band" clustered around the altar, with gospel choirs, singers, and even dancers!
Ellington knew, probably better than any of them, that religion and music - and especially
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