Events

[JAZZ] “There are two kinds of music. Good music and bad music.” That line is attributed to Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (it was also supposed to have originated with Louis Armstrong, Richard Strauss and Gioacchino Rossini, but who cares: it’s still true.) What Ellington meant by bad music (he also referred to it as “the other kind”) is music that bores you (like for me, Smooth Jazz). When the music is good, you’ll know it when you look “at the listener and see how the music, without them knowing anything about it, how it affects them; that primal, visceral feeling that you get when you hear something,” says Tim Kennedy, the founder and artistic director of Buffalo Opera Unlimited, which presents Salute to Duke Ellington this Saturday, October 10 at 8pm and Sunday, October 11 at 2:30pm at 710 Main Theatre.

Kennedy, along with singers Katy Minor, Zoe Viola Scruggs, Eric Wilbon and Lorenzo Parnell, appear with the George Caldwell Quintet, including Tim Clarke, trumpet; Bobby Militello, alto sax; Mike Foria, bass; Sean Jefferson, drums; and Caldwell at the piano. They and a dozen dancers will perform nearly a score of Ellington instrumental masterpieces and songs like “Take the ‘A’ Train”, “Caravan”, “Sophisticated Lady” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”.

Kennedy is especially pleased to have Caldwell, an alumnus of the Mercer Ellington and Count Basie Orchestras, as music director. He was amazed at first rehearsal when Caldwell started playing without any sheet music. He just knows it, enthuses Kennedy, who is also awed by his improvising, and ability to transpose keys. Says Kennedy, “Jazz musicians just shrug their shoulders about it, while I’m fascinated by what they do.”

Kennedy even had the good fortune of performing for Ellington in the late 1960s when his Sacred Concert was performed in Philadelphia, Kennedy’s native city. “I’ll never, ever, ever forget that,” he says.

Born in 1899, Ellington organized his first big band when he was 24, an ensemble he’d perform with for the next fifty years. Ellington composed collaboratively with his musicians: He’d have an idea and play it on the piano, and then ask for suggestions. This approach often credited him for the work of others, especially Billy Strayhorn. Still, it was the Duke who gave every composition that Ellington sound, which elevated these compositions, in the minds of many critics, to a level of complexity and elegance that far outshone the other swing and big bands of his day. One might say, if jazz is America’s classical music, then Duke Ellington is its Johann Strauss: Both took an indigenous colloquial musical form and perfected it, making it the emblematic music of its era.