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Duke Ellington | Essential albums and listening guide
Explore Duke Ellington through Ellington at Newport. Discover what to listen for and follow related styles to your next record.
Duke Ellington
Meet the artist
A central figure in twentieth-century American music, Ellington continually explored jazz as orchestral music through his work as a composer and bandleader. He treated his orchestra as an instrument, composing around the distinctive voices of its players.
Blues and dance music underpin everything from compact songs to extended suites. Layers of brass and reeds suggest glamour, shadows and humor, while improvisation gives the written music a human face. Ellington invites us to hear jazz as a collective landscape as well as a soloist's art.
Where to start listening
Listen beyond the soloists to the colors created by the horns together. Try hearing the entire orchestra as a single instrument.
1956Ellington at Newport
Duke Ellington
A live recording at the Newport Jazz Festival. Paul Gonsalves’s ecstatic twenty-seven-chorus solo dramatically renewed Ellington’s popularity.
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1957Such Sweet Thunder
Duke Ellington / Billy Strayhorn
A suite by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn inspired by Shakespeare, displaying their mastery of orchestral arranging.
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Years follow the Atlas catalogue. Recording dates, original release dates and digital reissue dates may differ.