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Duke Ellington's Shakespearean jazz

Broadcast Date: May 15, 1957

"Shakespeare was down," says acclaimed jazz musician and composer Duke Ellington. Ellington has just completed his Shakespearean jazz suite Such Sweet Thunder which was commissioned by the Stratford Music Festival. Jazz fans can expect to hear the waltz Lady Mac, which tells the story of Lady MacBeth's ragtime soul. The album also includes Sonnet For Caesar, Sonnet for Sister Kate, Sonnet In Search Of A Moor, and Star-Crossed Lovers.

This fall, Ellington will perform selections from his album at the Stratford Music Festival. Past Festival headliners include Count Basie, Billie Holiday, the Teddy Wilson Trio and the Gerry Mulligan Quartet. CBC Radio talks to Ellington about his new album in New York City.

Duke Ellington's Shakespearean jazz

• Ellington took the phrase 'such sweet thunder' from the line spoken by Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream: "I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder."
• The Stratford Festival has featured great musicians including Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Gordon Lightfoot, Loreena McKennitt, Joni Mitchell and Anne Murray.

• By the mid 1970s the music festival was finding it difficult to meet the demands of the big musical stars and this component of the Stratford Festival slowly faded away. In Remembering the Bard, author Martin Hunter suggests that musical director Louis Applebaum was skeptical that the festival could be sustained on such a large scale.
• In 2001 John Miller resurrected a new Stratford Summer Music Festival.

Duke Ellington's Shakespearean jazz

Medium: Radio

Program: Assignment

Broadcast Date: May 15, 1957

Guest(s): Duke Ellington

Host: Maria Barrett, Bill McNeil
Interviewer: Harry Rasky

Duration: 5:48

Last updated:
July 7, 2009