Far East Suite 1999

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About the Album: This recording of the FAR EAST SUITE is the culmination of a ten-year-long endeavor, the fulfillment of a marriage between a research project and a dream. The idea of blending Asian and Middle Eastern instruments and sensibilities into the multicultural melange of Duke Ellington and collaborator Billy Strayhorn's musical travelogue first occurred in 1989 while I was a doctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's newly acquired Duke Ellington Collection. During the fellowship, I was able to examine many of the thousands of original and copied manuscripts, scores, sketches and band parts as yet uncataloged in the archives. In 1991, I premiered a precursory project, a new version of Ellington's 1928 Cotton Club "jungle music" classic, "The Mooche," at the tenth anniversary of the Asian American Jazz Festival at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum. After completion of my doctoral coursework at UC Berkeley in 1992, I was hired by the Smithsonian to direct the Jazz Oral History Program, serve as curator of musical culture and assist in the completion of the Duke Ellington traveling exhibition, Beyond Category: The Musical Genius of Duke Ellington. Thus, the heretofore dream of first-hand accessibility to Ellington's musical magic was realized during my four years at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. A similar albeit more extensive process of intensive research and study was conducted for a new FAR EAST SUITE. The nine-movement Ellington-Strayhorn original is a musical portrait of the countries and people who welcomed them and the Orchestra on their tours in the 1960s. This new arrangement was originally conceived as a fitting commemoration of the Duke Ellington centennial, a celebration of his homage to Asia and the Middle East. The FAR EAST SUITE seemed ideally suited as a musical mirror of today's global community, a scintillating tapestry of contrasting moods, compositional styles, approaches to modality and tonality, and always the blues. There is only one commercial release of the Ellington Orchestra performing the FAR EAST SUITE, although various versions of "Ad Lib on Nippon" and the July 1963 recording of "Isfahan" (originally titled "Elf") are currently available on CD. Through examining original manuscripts, orchestral parts and subsequent transcriptions, and by creating a score reduction from the original 15- to a 12-piece orchestra with the invaluable arranging and copying assistance of Dan Nielsen, a blueprint for a new interpretation was constructed. The process now involved creating an arrangement incorporating and showcasing the distinctive talents of the members of Asian American Orchestra.