[ad_1]
From the present notes:
In 1956, Duke Ellington gave a collection of concert events at Ontario, Canada’s Stratford Pageant. Afterward, pageant employees requested the legendary composer—at that time, considered one of jazz’s elder statesmen—if he’d contemplate writing a bit about Shakespeare. A 12 months later, Duke Ellington premiered and recorded Such Candy Thunder, a collection of twelve tunes impressed by the Bard and his characters. We talked with College of New Hampshire Professor of English Douglas Lanier in regards to the suite, the second chapter of Ellington’s profession, and the way they mirror shifting cultural perceptions of jazz. Lanier, who can also be a musician, has written extensively about Shakespeare and fashionable fashionable tradition (actually, that’s the identify of his 2002 e book: Shakespeare and Trendy Standard Tradition), and is an professional on pop diversifications of Shakespeare’s works. He wrote about Ellington’s Such Candy Thunder for our 2007 exhibition, Shakespeare in American Life. Lanier is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.
In his e book “Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Creativeness,” Brent Hayes Edwards, professor of English and comparative literature, echoed the Duke as he wrote:
Within the last evaluation, whether or not or not it’s Shakespeare or jazz, the one factor that counts is the emotional impact on the listener. Someway, I believe that if Shakespeare had been alive at the moment, he could be a jazz fan himself — he’d recognize the mixture of workforce spirit and informality, of educational data and humor, of all the weather that go into a fantastic jazz efficiency. And I’m positive he would agree with the straightforward and axiomatic assertion that’s so necessary to all of us — when it sounds good, it’s good.
Right here, Ellington slyly pulls the rug out from beneath the critics who applaud the “Shakespearean” qualities in his music. If something, on this description of boundary crossing, Shakespeare is revealed to be an Ellingtonian earlier than his time. What unites jazz and Elizabethan drama, for Ellington, is above all a typical concern with capturing the colourful complexity of a specific social milieu. As Billy Strayhorn added in an interview, “Duke additionally mentioned that the one means Shakespeare might have referred to as a lot about individuals as he did was by hanging out on the nook or within the pool room. He says that if William Shakespeare had been alive at the moment, you’d certainly discover him down at Birdland listening to jazz.”
“Jazzing Up Shakespeare,” Douglas M. Lanier’s 2017 essay for the Folger Library, goes into depth about Ellington’s suite.
In his program notes for the primary efficiency of Such Candy Thunder, Ellington worries that, as classics, he and Shakespeare labor beneath the misperception that their arts are for the cultural elite, making some reluctant “to reveal themselves and be a part of the viewers.” Within the Nineteen Thirties and Forties, swing had been seen because the very voice of popularization, reaching (problematically) throughout racial divides and rendering no matter it touched fashionable, American, and instantly interesting, however in 1957 the “classicizing” of Ellington’s music by linking it to Shakespeare risked making jazz a coterie type, the property of connoisseurs. In his program notes Ellington seeks to navigate these considerations.
On the one hand, he stresses that “whether or not or not it’s Shakespeare or jazz, the one factor that counts is the emotional impact on the listener”—no particular data is required. The ability of the efficiency’s “rapid affect on the human ear” aligns each Ellington and Shakespeare with fashionable tradition and doubtlessly democratizes their respective audiences. Then again, Ellington claims that his artwork and Shakespeare’s are sufficiently refined to reward repeated encounters, an assertion which differentiates their arts from mere pop ephemera. Right here Ellington articulates the musical ambitions of his later profession—to create a music with the status and virtuosity of different classics and the inclusive immediacy of fashionable tradition.
Ellington’s Such Candy Thunder consists of 11 numbers, every of which is linked to Shakespearean characters:
“Such Candy Thunder” [Othello]
“Sonnet for Caesar” [Julius Caesar]
“Sonnet to Hank Cinq” [Henry V]
“Woman Mac” [Lady Macbeth]
“Sonnet in Search of a Moor” [Othello]
“The Telecasters” [The Three Witches and Iago]
“Up and Down, Up and Down, I Will Lead Them (Up and Down)” [Puck]
“Sonnet for Sister Kate” [Katherine]
“The Star-Crossed Lovers” [Romeo and Juliet]
“Insanity in Nice Ones” [Hamlet]
“Half the Enjoyable” [Cleopatra]A last quantity, “Circle of Fourths,” added later, provides a musical tribute to Shakespeare himself.
Right here is the complete album, together with “Circle of Fourths.”
Tracklist:
A1 Such Candy Thunder 0:00 A2 Sonnet For Caesar 3:22 A3 Sonnet To Hank Cinq 6:22 A4 Woman Mac 7:45 A5 Sonnet In Search Of A Moor 11:26 A6 The Telecasters 13:51B1 Up And Down, Up And Down (I Will Lead Them Up And Down) 16:55 B2 Sonnet For Sister Kate 20:01 B3 The Star-Crossed Lovers 22:24 B4 Insanity In Nice Ones 26:27B5 Half The Enjoyable 29:53 B6 Circle Of Fourths 34:08
Ellington was not the one jazz musician fascinated by the Bard. Black British jazz vocalist Dame Cleo Laine and her husband, the composer and saxophonist John Dankworth, recorded “Shakespeare and All That Jazz” in 1964. It was ”retro reviewed” in 2019 by Thomas Cunniffe, the founder, editor, and principal author for Jazz Historical past On-line.
The texts cowl Shakespeare’s sonnets, comedies (“Midsummer Night time’s Dream”, “As You Like It”, “Twelfth Night time”, “Love’s Labors Misplaced” and “A lot Ado About Nothing”) and tragedies (“Macbeth” and “Cymbeline”). 4 of the musical settings are the identical Arthur Younger preparations Laine recorded in 1959, two others are diversifications of actions from the Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn suite, “Such Candy Thunder,” and the rest are Dankworth originals. Apart from the aspect closers, “Dunsinane Blues” (an adaptation from “Macbeth” probably impressed by a Leonard Bernstein instance in his lecture “What’s Jazz?”) and “The Compleat Works” (a breezy catalogue of Shakespeare’s play titles), all the works embrace Shakespeare’s texts as he wrote them.
These texts aren’t essentially simple to sing, however you’d by no means inform from Laine’s easy performances. She takes these tongue-twisting lyrics and phrases them in ways in which make them match proper into their fashionable jazz settings. The Ellington/Strayhorn items had been set to sonnet kinds, and “Take All My Loves” (initially titled “Sonnet for Hank Cinq”) has a particularly wide-ranging melody that Laine sings as if it had been a easy ditty. Dankworth creates an atmospheric background with clarinets and harp for the opposite Ellington/Strayhorn piece, “My Love is as a Fever” (“Sonnet for Caesar”), and Laine’s legato efficiency is particularly efficient. On “Duet of Sonnets” (sonnets 23 and 24), and “Witches Honest and Foul” (combining Titania from “Midsummer” and the three witches from “Macbeth”), Laine and Dankworth use the stereo soundscape and inventive overdubbing to have Laine singing two and three completely different melodic traces directly. She makes a dramatic change to her vocal timbre in portraying the “Macbeth” witches, a lot so that you just may not acknowledge her at first listening to.
This Twitter consumer shares cowl artwork and different snapshots from jazz historical past. “Shakespeare and All That Jazz” hit their feed in 2021.
Because of YouTube, we will get pleasure from this reside 2007 efficiency of songs from the album.
Half I:
Half II:
The jazz custom of jammin’ to Shakespeare continues with pianist, composer, and humanities educator Daniel Kelly, that includes vocal phenom Frederick Johnson in his program, “Shakespeare in Jazz: All of the World’s a Tune.”
Shakespeare in Jazz: All of the World’s a Tune is an interesting, participatory celebration of Shakespeare’s work, providing an thrilling new option to expertise the his genius. Nice for these discovering his performs for the primary time and for Shakespeare aficionados alike!
All through the live performance, viewers members will be a part of Daniel’s jazz group, that includes a tremendous jazz vocalist, as they sing alongside to catchy, unique songs primarily based on Midsummer Night time’s Dream, Twelfth Night time, Macbeth, Hamlet and plenty of extra!
Shakespeare in Jazz options the large skills of jazz vocalist Frederick Johnson and Nicole Zuraitis. Johnson has carried out on stage with such musical greats as Chick Corea & Christian McBride and has carried out as a gap act for Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Aretha Franklin, George Benson, B.B. King and plenty of others. Rising star and GRAMMY-nominee Nicole Zuraitis has toured all over the world, launched 4 award-winning albums and is the vocalist world-famous Birdland Huge Band in New York Metropolis.)
This efficiency is from 2018.
Hope you’ve loved at the moment’s Shakespeare celebration. Be part of me for extra within the feedback!
[ad_2]
Source link