Search - Duke Ellington :: The Private Collection, Vol. 5: The Suites, New York, 1968 & 1970

The Laboratory

Joseph Cavaseno | Bellerose, NY United States | 12/13/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is the CD I finally had to get after only having cassette dubs of a bunch of the private recordings of Ellington's vault, as played on Danish Radio when Mercer lived in Copenhagen. Although I have more outtakes than this CD provides, nothing beats having this material on CD for sheer quality. Duke wrote some great material for the first part of this CD known as the Degas Suite, which was written for a documentary on the artist. This features the 1968 band, especially some rare Willie Cook musings that are not heard anywhere else in this type of context. But it is the River, a ballet written expressley for the Alivn Ailey Ballet Company, that is actually the summary of Duke's Autobiography in music. Despite the fact that these performances are in reality sketches and rather unpolished runthroughs, they are still the only 'Ducal' renditions of some of his most breathtaking pieces."