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INTRODUCTION BY PETER LONG





My name is Peter Long. I am the musical director of the Ronnie Scott’s Jazz
Orchestra, and for the last thirty years of my life I’ve been researching and
re-creating the music of Duke Ellington. This has gone quite well. The band has
received awards, toured Europe and has been one of a handful of large British
jazz ensembles to tour the U.S.

While driving in the car this time last year, “Venus” from the Planets Suite by
Holst came on the radio. It suddenly struck me how Ellingtonian the curves of
the melody were, and how Holst’s warped, flowing harmonic symmetry was so
redolent of that of Ellington’s composing partner, Billy Strayhorn. It was a
long car journey, and by the time I’d reached my destination, the broad idea of
re-orchestrating the whole suite for an Ellington-style orchestra had coalesced.

Ellington playing the classics is not without precedent. in 1960, he recorded
two suites of pieces, the first being a Christmas release of Tchaikovsky’s
Nutcracker, and the second a shorter but very effective treatment if Peer Gynt
by Greig. I had a template! What makes these works so effective is that
Ellington and Strayhorn left the original themes recognisable, but at the same
time adapted them to sound like convincing jazz compositions. Like the
Nutcracker and Peer Gynt, the Planets is full of very strong well-known
melodies, and like one of Ellington’s own suites from that period, the Planets
consists of short pieces linked only by their inspiration and excellence- no
fixed themes running through the whole. Conceptually as well as musically, I
knew I was onto something.

The first stage of the operation was to fix how Holst’s melodies were going to
receive a jazz treatment. My process was to go through the score with the
recording and mark off where the obvious themes were. In the classical setting,
there is much embellishment and extension sewn into the orchestration. In the
jazz orchestra, this work is often done by the improvisations of the original
musicians, so essentially this was a process of reduction.



A jazz number naturally scans in eight bar chunks. If it doesn’t, the balance of
the music can be thrown awry, and so the next task was to produce a song copy
style leadsheet with the themes contracted or expanded to fit this template.
This is the process Billy Strayhorn used in many parts of the Nutcracker.
Bearing also in mind that Ellington’s jazz of 1960 was almost exclusively in
4/4, I had to do quite a bit of surgery on Mars, which is in 5, and Neptune,
which is in 7. This follows Strayhorn’s example in the Waltz Of The little
Flowers, which in his version was a hip-switching shuffle in very broad 4! One
of the great joys of brewing Holst’s harmonies down from his orchestral score
into leadsheet style chord symbols was that I quickly learned that Holst was
speaking the same harmonic language as the cutting edge jazz artists of the
mid-1960s, but in 1918!

The next phase was to take these leadsheets out onto small band jazz gigs and
play them as if they were ordinary jazz standards.

This accomplished two things- firstly it enabled me to see how these tunes sat
in a jazz context, and make small adjustments as necessary. Secondly, I was able
to gauge public reaction. After eight months’ work, I was delighted that the
reception was universally warm and enthusiastic. Now I had my Planets
functioning as jazz melodies, the last stage was to produce the Ellingtonian
arrangements- I embarked on a heavy listening programme of Duke’s recordings of
the time, most notably the Far East Suite, Anatomy Of A Murder, Suite Thursday
and of course, Peer Gynt and The Nutcracker. As well as incorporating as many of
his compositional and orchestrational devices as I could (This would fill
another whole paper) I did as he would, and re-cycled some pre-existing
material. Therefore, Duke Ellington’s planets begins with the title track from
his 1958 album Blues In Orbit, as orbit seems a perfectly logical place from
which to start a journey around the solar system.

I merged two unrecorded Billy Strayhorn compositions, just as he did with
Pentonsilic in the 1944 work, The Perfume Suite, to form “Pluto, The Uncertain”
with which to conclude our journey. This has been great fun. it has revealed an
enormous amount about both Ellington and Holst, and I hope that the result is
exciting, illuminating and humorous in equal parts. I have tried out Jupiter and
Venus at Ronnie Scott’s with the band there now to big rounds of applause, and
will be performing the work in its entirety there on July 8.
I didn’t realise when I embarked on the project that it would coincide with the
centenary of the original performance in 1918,. It’s got to be a sign! From the
planets, in fact! Peter Long, Croydon, April 2018


THE ARRANGER'S TRACK BY TRACK DESCRIPTIONS





I have prepared this suite of pieces as best I can to the mores and methods used
by Ellington and Strayhorn in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. This period saw
many of the great Ellington extended works come to fruition, especially the
Nutcracker and Peer Gynt suites, which served as the basic inspiration for this
adaptation of the Planets. I’ll make the specific references as I go along.

Holst’s setting for his planets was astrological. Thus Venus was subtitled “The
Bringer Of Peace”, Uranus “The Magician” and so forth, with the music reflecting
their mythical properties rather than anything physical. Our journey through the
solar system differs in that being of the post Star Trek generation, we are much
more at ease with the concept of sailing along between heavenly
bodies.Consequently our journey starts in orbit above our home planet, and
reaches out as far as Pluto.

Pluto was not known to Holst at the time, and so is absent from his work.
However, when applying Ellington’s methods to this work, it is important to
remember that he would use the highly individual solo voices available in his
orchestra to create melodic inspiration and tonal atmosphere. In general, this
is the most notable factor in Ellington’s writing, and to a large extent the
thing that separates him from his peers. During the above mentioned period, he
and Strayhorn produced a suite called “Such Sweet Thunder”, a sequence of pieces
dedicated to the characters and situations to be found in Shakespeare. He went
as far as casting in some detail original Shakespearian characters to the
members of his orchestra. 

Given that Holst’s Planets is similarly character driven, it seemed to me to
make sense to assign each movement to one soloist.

The musicians in the Echoes Of Ellington have been selected on the basis that
they are the most capable artists in the field of re-creating the sounds of
their corresponding player in the original Ellington orchestra. By thinking
which of Ellington’s soloists would be best served by the various melodies of
the Planets, it was quite a simple job to decide who was going to play what!
Thus each movement is a tribute to one of Ellington’s stellar soloists too. They
each demonstrate the symbiosis which exists in the mutual influence between
composer and musician, and celebrate jointly the genius inherent in both
Ellington and Holst. On top of which there is a seam of humour running through
the whole thing. It seems to me that people are always amused hearing these
famous classical melodies in fancy dress, as it were.

BLUES IN ORBIT | DUKE ELLINGTON

CHRIS TRAVES, THE CAPTAIN

For Quentin Jackson

To add weight to a suite, Ellington would often include earlier work. Here we
have a really late-night feel to open the show. This is actually the title track
from the album of the same name from 1959, but given its title, I felt it formed
the perfect place from which to start an Ellingtonian trip through the cosmos.
I’ve cast trombonist Chris Traves as our heroic pilot. His abilities to make the
trombone talk cut him out as the prime candidate for all the in-flight
announcements in every movement. Here, however, we get the full pre-flight
briefing in the spaceport under the harsh 2a.m. strip lighting of the opening
saxophone chords!

MERCURY | HOLST, ARR LONG
JAMES DAVISON, THE WINGED MESSENGER
FOR CLARK TERRY

James has an unusual ability- he can re-create the highly stylised flugelhorn
bebop of jazz virtuoso Clark Terry, so much a feature in Ellington’s work at
this time. In the orchestral score, the high-velocity running of Mercury around
the heavens is portrayed by fleet strings and woodwinds running fast up and down
a series of scales which, funnily enough would prove very popular with jazz
musicians around forty years later. When people say that Holst is very Jazzy,
they’re not quite nailing it. Jazz can be very Holsty!

In our version a high velocity swing groove is the thing. He’s a winged
messenger, not the second class mail! I used as the main building blocks the two
main strains of singable melody in the original, and, indicating the scale
patterns of Holst’s woodwinds on his part, I had Jim do his own thing on them at
mercurial speed in the style of Clark Terry. For the same money. Terrifying!

VENUS | HOLST ARR. LONG
COLIN SKINNER, THE BRINGER OF PEACE
FOR JOHNY HODGES


Colin is widely renowned as the best impersonator of the serenely sonorous alto
saxophonist Johnny Hodges that there is. The big Hodges ballad often forms the
centrepiece of an Ellington suite, as it does here. When we were in Chicago
performing the Shakespeare suite, a very old lady came to the bandstand and
asked to speak to Colin. It turned out that she had been Hodges’ girlfriend and
that when Colin played, she said that it made her feel that he was alive again.
A beautiful moment, but a heavy one!

Venus was the hardest of the original tunes to shape into something that sounds
like a jazz standard. Although the melodies are glorious, they are of very
irregular lengths, and jazz tunes need that regularity, and so some considerable
pulling, pushing and tweaking of the original was required. From the opening
pilot’s announcement from Chris’ trombone up to the piano setting up the groove
before Colin’s entry, this one is pure Holst, the original orchestral notes just
being transferred to the instruments of the big band. On the first run through,
trombonist Callum Au complained that I’d not included the violin solo from the
original, and that it was his favourite bit. Reasoning that this extra melodic
strain would provide a nice contrast in the flow of my adaptation, I did a
second draft which included it. Because he’d been a smartarse, I gave the melody
to Callum to get on with, top E flat and all.

MARS | HOLST, ARR. LONG
LOUIS DOWDESWELL, THE BRINGER OF WAR
FOR CAT ANDERSON

Right from the get-go, I felt that Mars would need to be a vehicle for Louis
Dowdeswell. Louis is able to compress air down a trumpet like no-one else alive,
which gives him a high register facility on the trumpet which is frankly
disturbing. He is the only trumpet player I’ve heard capable of reliably hitting
the notes of Ellington’s stratospheric soloist, Cat Anderson.

Mars needed to be big. Holst’s original is huge, and a big band just doesn’t
have the tonal resources of an 80-piece symphony orchestra with its legions of
brass, walls of percussion and tsunami of low strings. We do have Louis, though.
The colour of the trumpet in the register he is capable of operating is so vivid
and penetrating that I felt we would be able to create the impact that the
orchestra can. It also focuses young Louis as the specific character as the
bringer of war, armed as he is with a fire-breathing lightsaber of a trumpet.

Musically, I had to ponder long and hard about the rhythmic basis for this
treatment. To create suspense and unease, Holst positions the entire composition
over a five-beat pattern. It is most unlikely that Ellington would, in 1960, be
inclined to play anything in five, especially a melody which is so redolent of
his earlier work on the Cotton Club. I therefore contracted the groove by one
beat per bar, and lengthened the main melody carried in the saxophones to an
eight-beat pattern over two bars of four. Trying this out in the workshopping
stage at clubs and on musician friends, it quickly became apparent that because
the original melody with its compelling arcs of dissonance are so strong, the
missing beat soon disappeared from everybody’s attention. Perhaps I should have
a go at accountancy.

THE ASTEROIDS | HOLST, ARR LONG
CALUM AU AND MIKE HALL, THE DANCERS
FOR BRIT WOODMAN AND PAUL GONSALVES

This one represents a bit of performance problem solving, and also permits a bit
of astronomical authenticity. You have to traverse the asteroids if you want to
get from Mars to Jupiter.

It is, as you will hear, two of the four melodies contained in the original
movement Jupiter. For reasons I’ll discuss later, I wanted Jay Craig to take the
main solo role, but I felt it would have strained the art a bit to have him take
four tunes in a row.

I also wanted to feature some straight ahead trombone and tenor sax jazz at some
point in the show, especially as another defining feature of Ellington at this
time would be the sinewy improvisations of tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves. In
Mike Hall I have access to that sound, and as everybody likes a fight, I wanted
him to engage in a jazz duel with trombonist Au, who can really stoke the fires
a la Britt Woodman. To give this some interplanetary theatrical shape, I hit
upon the idea of trying to portray our spaceship getting into a spot of bother
in the maelstrom that is the asteroid belt, two of the crew need to go out as
the pumice is raining down thick and fast and unclog the particle conversion
emitters, or something. The engine starts again and off we go to..

JUPITER | HOLST, ARR. LONG
JAY CRAIG, THE BRINGER OF JOLLITY
FOR HARRY CARNEY


The hymn section of this is one of the most loved melodies we currently have on
our planet, and so I figured that it would be a wise move to present it in a
pretty straight way, and let the genius of its construction do the bulk of the
work. In my mind this had to be a baritone sax solo performed by Jay Craig. Jay
is a huge avuncular presence right across the music business, and an absolutely
genuine bringer of a vast amount of jollity!

He was frog-marched as a teenager by his visionary music teacher to watch
Ellington’s band play a concert in the Usher Hall in his hometown of Edinburgh.
Transfixed as he was by the cavernous glory of Harry Carney’s baritone sax mere
feet away from him, he has made it his life’s work ever since to emulate his
idol. It was often said that Ellington’s band had two saxophone sections- Harry
Carney and the other four.

Jay is as happy on a rock-steady groove as he is on a heart-rending ballad, and
I wanted this arrangement to incorporate that. He gets the first theme as a
mambo, changing to swing, and then the big tear-jerking moment on the hymn. I
decided to end with a typically Ellingtonian ending for the time, whereby the
arrangement peters out to just the soloist and the piano. In the real world,
this would be Ellington’s sleight of hand at work, as he always composed right
up to the deadline, and details such as a through-composed ending could easily
become overlooked. In the case of Ella Fitzgerald and the Duke Ellington
Songbook from 1959, he had Billy Strayhorn on all fours in the control room
writing out the next arrangement while the band ran down and recorded the
previous one, the ink still wet on the parts!

SATURN | HOLST, ARR. LONG
JOE PETTITT, THE BRINGER OF OLD AGE
FOR JIMMY WOODE


I learnt a lot doing this one. Jazz was even more Holsty that I’d imagined.
Virtually all of this arrangement is the original orchestration taken from the
score and re-assigned to the instruments of the jazz orchestra. The only big
difference is that it is all over a complex ostinato bass pattern, performed by
Joe Pettitt.

The sombre nature of the piece leant itself to this treatment. In the
Shakespeare Suite, we have a piece entitled Half The Fun, and in the Nutcracker
there is Arabesque Cookie where a sensuous melody slowly weaves its way over
African sounding drums and unrelenting double bass.

Joe is one of the new generation of bass players who play entirely acoustically,
and has the physical strength to make his strings cut through the wall of sound
that is the big band. Although this is viewed as something new, it is in fact
the old fashioned way of doing things. Joe also runs his own band, serving up
finely crafted concerts of big band nostalgia and ballroom dancing up and down
the country. I’m glad he found it funny when he was cast as the Bringer Of Old
Age!

URANUS | HOLST, ARR. LONG
COLIN GOOD, THE MAGICIAN
FOR DUKE ELLINGTON AND BILLY STRAYHORN


If we were to attempt to put a label on the piano style of Ellington himself, we
could do worse than to say that its roots are in the stride tradition. Colin
Good is a giant on the scene when it comes to stride piano, specialising in the
work of Earl Hines, but also utterly and completely versed in the techniques of
Teddy Wilson, Basie and of course, Ellington.

As Holst’s original had a rumbling, minor feel, it seemed logical to me to
translate it to the rumbling, minor shuffle feel that Ellington loved to play so
much around this time. Loping bass plays around shards of piano harmony as the
first of the two melodies coalesces from the rhythmic brew. Throughout this
Movement, Holst uses a four note motif as a punctuation point, and I’ve
incorporated it to flag up changes in the mood.

NEPTUNE | HOLST, ARR. LONG
PETER LONG, THE MYSTIC
FOR JIMMY HAMILTON

One of the trickier ones to adapt for the big band, as Neptune is a passing
series of opalescent orchestral timbres with no definite melody. The harmony is
a different matter altogether, as its basic opening pattern is echoed in many
swing era warhorses such as 9.20 Special or Swingtime In The Rockies. I
eventually settled on the opening figure played on the flutes to provide the
melodic hook, and placed it all over a soothing latin pattern. Much of the end
of the original is given over to an ethereal climbing pattern in the strings
overlaid on a womens’ choir. Not having either a string section or singing
ladies to use, I’ve adapted the phrases to form a slow-burning swinging climax,
before the final fade out on Clarinet and Piano echoing the original.

I didn’t really want to feature myself, but some of the lads in the band advised
me that it would be bad showbiz if I didn’t. The limpid melodic strains of the
melody well suit the supple tones of Jimmy Hamilton’s clarinet, and so in the
quiet high register passages and flurries of whole tone scales I did my best to
emulate him. I hope you enjoy it.

PLUTO | BILLY STRAYHORN
RYAN QUIGLEY, THE GATEKEEPER
FOR RAY NANCE

Conceptual fun here. As earlier mentioned, there is no Pluto in the original. I
did what Ellington did on many occasions and dug out a fully formed unrecorded
Billy Strayhorn piece. Famous examples of this are “The Star Crossed Lovers”
from Such Sweet Thunder, written six years earlier and entitled “Pretty Girl”
and “Isfahan” from the Far East Suite, enigmatically going under the name of
“Elf”.

Here we have a wonderful piece of swing modernism from 1944 originally entitled
“Le Sacre Supreme”. It features the searing, passionate trumpet playing of Ryan
Quigley, one of the most remarkable new voices on his instrument to have come
through in the last twenty years. Not having any original text to draw open, I
could pretty much say what I wanted. The premise is that being at the far rim of
the solar system, Pluto forms the frontier post with the rest of creation. What
do you get at frontier posts? Bars, that’s what. As well as being the
gatekeeper, Ryan runs the bar. Listen to how he presides over the hubbub of
voices from our interstellar visitors with his incontrovertible jazz.

WHY IS IT "DUKE ELLINGTON'S PLANETS" AND NOT JUST THE "JAZZ PLANETS"





A fair question. Here’s your bullet points:

Ellington and Holst share the ability to pull off the same clever trick. Both
composers use a very high degree of sophisticated harmony and rhythm, but have
the ability to infuse the whole thing with a high level of humanity with their
incredible abilities as melodists. Without this and the extra magic ingredient
of genius, listeners would be turning off in droves.

Everybody who hears Ellington’s music in the flesh completely gets it, and the
Planets has been a massive public favourite since its first performance in 1918.

If you root around inside the music, you will find that the technical
similarities between the two composers far outweigh the differences.

Ellington is regarded as the pre-eminent American composer of the twentieth
century. His music transcends mere jazz by dint of its extended forms, open
structures and unique symbiotic orchestration. Only a credo as massive as his
could take on the weight of Holst’s masterpiece and provide the method for
translating it into something other.

Ellington’s music is regarded as something special by all jazz musicians.

Ellington himself tried to distance himself from having his work referred to as
“Jazz”, trying instead to have it referred to as “Music”. Of all the jazz
composers, it is Ellington who has to the greatest extent become a formal
concert artist. Thus he is best equipped to stand at the junction between the
two worlds of Classical and Jazz.

Ellington has a history of taking classical music and having it adapted to his
orchestra. In 1960, he had success with his records of the Nutcracker and Peer
Gynt. The Planets follows logically on from these two works.

Jazz itself is a massive arena now. It has become a world music, and so it is
now a very nebulous question to define exactly what it is. Is it an avant-garde
brass ensemble in a New York Basement Club? Is it a baritone saxophonist jamming
in quarter tones with a Gamelan? Is it a Rod Stewart album of standards? Who
knows. What is needed to shine a new light on the Holst work is a narrow enough
focus to give the suite cohesion. The five reasons above explain why it will
work following Ellington’s example.

I really like Duke Ellington. I really like the Planets. It’s my project, so
there. Nerr.


ECHOES OF ELLINGTON JAZZ ORCHESTRA





In 1914, a young man called Edward Ellington wrote a simple piano piece entitles
Soda Fountain Rag. Over the next sixty years, he would compose a cannon of work
which would have him recognised as the foremost American composer of any genre.
Nicknamed Duke by his schoolfriends because of his regal bearing, Ellingtons
music contains a unique blend of contrasts and contradictions. At once visceral
and elegant, intimate and shouting, traditional and progressive, the music is
unique, exciting, earthy and refined.

The Echoes Of Ellington was first formed in 1994 to celebrate the Duke’s music,
and to bring it by live performance to a modern audience. Jazz enthusiasts the
length and breadth of the nation, and later on in Europe and the United States
were amazed by the group’s ability to get inside the scores and really bring out
the Ellington flavour.

Today, the orchestra is in its finest incarnation yet, with highly specialised
virtuoso players on all the instruments who understand intimately the nuances
put on the page by the Duke. Whether a familiar standard such as Satin Doll, or
a rare marvel from one of the Suites, you can be sure of a sonic big band
journey like no other.

The show is conducted and presented by clarinettist Peter Long, who over the
years has built a reputation as the pre-eminent big band frontman in the United
Kingdom today. As well as keeping you entertained with the music, he will ensure
that you will leave the show with a little more background information than you
were expecting, heightening the experience of hearing the music by
understanding.

ANDY FLAXMAN
LEAD TROMBONE


With 22 years in the Coldstream Guards band entertaning Her Majesty, Andy has
previous experience with the Planets, having played Holst’s original
arrangements of Jupiter and Mars adapted for military band. Andy is no stranger
to playing his trombone in space, having been a part of an antiphonal brass
ensemble in a hot air balloon 100 feet off the ground. With a foot in the
classical arena too, there’s not much point listing Andy’s CV, as he’s in
everybody’s band!

NATHAN BRAY
LEAD TRUMPET

Accurate, versatile and powerful, and one of the few leading professionals to
have not gone through the college system, Nathan has brought his classy approach
to the BBC concert orchestra, Guy Barker’s big band, the Ronnie Scott’s Jazz
Orchestra and too many west end shows to mention.

COLIN SKINNER
LEAD ALTO

Originally trained on the bassoon, Colin settled eventually on the more romantic
alto sax, belying his reserved Edinburgh roots. Now at the top of the music
business tree as both a musician and a composer, Colin’s talents have shone
brightly in his own collaborations with Matt Skelton in the Skelton-Skinner
all-stars, his compositions for the LSO and the BBC Singers.

CALLUM AU
TROMBONE

Hailing from the jazz hotbed that is Blackpool, Callum started playing and
subsequently arranging in his teens. Since then, his arrangements have been
played by Claire Martin, the Metropole Orchestra and Curtis Stigers. He first
became known as a trombonist in the ranks of NYJO, and subsequently in the
Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Orchestra. As a bandleader himself, Callum has recorded the
album “Something’s Coming”, the centrepiece of which is his re-working of West
Side Story.

LOUIS DOWDESWELL
TRUMPET

Owing to a freak birth accident, Louis is able to play the trumpet higher than
anyone else, and for the same money too. In the normal register on his
instrument, Louis has played for Robbie Williams, Michael Buble and Alfie Boe.
Additionally, Louis has become a YouTube sensation on his own channel presenting
big band re-workings of classic melodies. Due to his incredible panache and
talent, Louis now has millions of followers.

MIKE HALL
TENOR SAX

Mike is head of jazz at the Royal Northern College Of Music. Starting in NYJO,
Mike spent 25 years working with the iconic British jazz composer Michael
Garrick. The 2013 Manchester Jazz festival saw the Thelonius Monks commission go
to Mike for his groundbreaking work, “With Criminal Intent”, a unique fusion of
Baroque and Hard Bop. Mike’s deep love of the oblique style of Ellingon’s tenor
sax soloist Paul Gonsalves makes him the natural choice for the solo chair in
our band.

SIMON MARSH
ALTO SAX AND CLARINET

Known as the Frome Flash. Having the unusual attribute of having never made a
mistake, Simon can play any wind instrument in any style. Need rock soprano sax?
Give Simon a shout. Recital standard bass flute? Call Simon. You get the
picture. His faultless virtuosity has led him to work with Dame Shirley Bassey,
and he can be found all over the West End like its rising water table.

JAY CRAIG
BARITONE SAX

Jay’s incandescent career started in the United States with the legendary Buddy
Rich. Lucky amongst musicians, Jay has got to play with many of his heroes
including Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Billy May and Bill Holman. His regular
playing credits include 26 years in the BBC Big Band, Stan Tracey, the Syd
Lawrence Orchestra and the John Wilson Orchestra. He is also a sought after big
band director, both at the BBC and with his highly acclaimed own band.

RYAN QUIGLEY
TRUMPET

Derry born and Glasgow raised, Ryan has been the dominant voice on the Scottish
trumpet scene for the last fifteen years. As well as his stellar playing abilty,
he is a prolific big band composer and arranger, and has produced a variety of
concerts stretching the big band idiom into such diverse and popular fields as
the Beatles and Motown. Touring and recording credits include Quincy Jones,
George Michael, Aretha Franklin, Miuchael buble and the Metropole Orkest.

JAMES DAVISON
TRUMPET

Having taken the London scene by storm, James has, in his short career,
established himself in a wide variety of musical habitats. He can be found in
the Royal Philharmonic orchestra and everywhere in between to fronting his own
quintet at Ronnie Scott’s. Jim is a founder member of the Patchwork Jazz
Orchestra, which serves as a forum for contemporary composition.

COLIN GOOD
PIANO

For years recognised as the leading exponent of 1930’s piano style, Colin
shocked the entire jazz community by going on the road for fourteen years with
none other than Bryan Ferry! Now back from his stint on the Pop Gravy Train,
Colin is now a leading light in the Shoreditch Vintage Jazz Movement.

FATHER PAUL NATHANIEL
TENOR SAX

In between his amateur preaching obligations, Father Paul plays in a huge
variety of ensembles, from the LSO to the Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Orchestra.
Experienced and accurate on a wide variety of woodwind instruments, his skills
make him a regular feature of West End theatres. Paul is also a highly respected
educator, holding down, amongst other things, the saxophone and clarinet
teaching job at Eton College

RICHARD PITE
DRUMS

As well as being a regular contributor to Not So Modern Drummer and the director
of the Jazz Repetory Company, Richard is known throughout the musical community
for his mastery of vintage and period drum styles. Playing an original 1940
Slingerland Radio King kit, his big sound and lilting groove means that he is
first call for all things swing. His great knowledge of the genre means that
whenever there is a radio or TV programme commissioned involving the big band
era or before, you’ll find him nestled somewhere in the proceedings playing his
drums or talking from his encyclopaedic knowledge.

JOE PETTITT
BASS

A project such as this really requires that the double bass player can make the
instrument heard without using an amplifier. Joe is so strong that he can crush
concrete with his bare hands . As a result, we often have to ask him to ease off
a bit! A true renaissance man on the bass and guitar in all their forms, Joe
plays the whole gamut from folk to funk. He is also a ballroom dancing
specialist, leading his own orchestra at all the big dance events.

CHRIS TRAVES
PLUNGER TROMBONE/PRODUCTION

Many years ago, Chris landed the lead trombone job in the West End production of
Chicago, a post he held for fifteen years. As part of the job, he had to master
the difficult art of playing the trombone whilst growling from the throat and
waving a sink plunger over the bell. This produces the “Talking” tone on the
instrument which originated in the Duke Ellington orchestra and is such a
significant ingredient in the soundscape. After fifteen years of eight shows a
week, Chris is now the master of this technique. For the right money, he can
also play the instrument normally. His other great talent is as a sound
engineer, and his great ear and consummate technical knowledge of the acoustic
recording process have made our recording sing with the unique clarity that you
will enjoy.


ABOUT RECORDING SESSIONS




SOMEWHAT MORE OF A TREAT FOR JAZZ BUFFS THAN CLASSICAL FANS, I VENTURE. BUT TO
HEAR PLAYERS THIS SKILLED LET LOOSE IN FRESH FIELDS IS EXHILARATING AND LONG CAN
BE PROUD OF THIS.
- JUSTLISTENTOTHIS






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LONG'S STABLE OF LIKE MINDED PLAYERS HAS DONE AN AMAZING JOB DELIVERING THIS
LANDMARK ACHIEVEMENT PERFORMING WITH UNBRIDLED CREATIVITY WHILE EMBRACING
ELLINGTONIA AT EVERY TURN. A UNIVERSAL TRUTH INDEED. THIS GUSTAV IS GOOD STUFF!-
LONDONJAZZNEWS



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EVENT DATES



THE CLASSICAL DUKE ELLINGTON


VENUE: CADOGAN HALL


SATURDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2018, 7.30PM


Book tickets


THE CLASSICAL DUKE ELLINGTON


VENUE: THE CONCORDE CLUB


WEDNESDAY 5 SEPTEMBER 2018 AT 8.15PM


Book tickets
Contact


PR ENQUIRIES

Samantha Giannini

The PR Stable

samgiannini@btinternet.com

+44(0)7932 820952


RECORD COMPANY AND DISTRIBUTION ENQUIRIES

Right Track Records & Distribution

24 Hanover Square, London W1S 1JD

info@righttrackdistribution.com

+44(0)20 7291 1676


DUST TO DAWN

By DJ Lowtempo
Release date: 2016
 * Free Download1
   Nuclear Ft. Drake
 * Free Download2
   Airborn
 * Listen on Spotify3
   Game Time
 * Listen on Spotify4
   Back Once
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   Resurrected
 * Listen on Spotify6
   Outbreak Ft. Reign
 * Listen on Spotify7
   Break Aparts





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