Such Suite Music: Columbia presents a listening session and performance of excerpts from Duke Ellington's Shakespearean suite "Such Sweet Th

Upper West Side NY

23 February, 2022

4:01 PM

Description

Columbia Daily Spectator BY AVA ROBERTS FEBRUARY 22, 2022 Shakespeare's tried and true romances, uproarious comedies, and dire tragedies funnel into a fluid jazz standard in Duke Ellington's "Such Sweet Thunder," the inspiration for Columbia's year-long event "Such Sweet Thunder: Ellington Plays Shakespeare—Love and Power in Adaptation." Fans of Ellington, Shakespeare, and Columbia's literary canon alike flocked to their computers to watch academic experts and jazz musicians honor the work through performance of and commentary on the piece. On Feb. 11, Columbia's Center for Jazz Studies presented a live-streamed listening session of the "Such Sweet Thunder" Shakespearean suite as part of a larger year-long University-wide series aiming to explore what happens when the worlds of Ellington and Shakespeare collide in the modern world. The event brought together diverse voices from the Columbia community who discussed components of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's "Such Sweet Thunder," the jazz trailblazer's 1957 hit album. At the first performance of "Such Sweet Thunder" at the 1957 Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario, Ellington wrote that, "[Shakespeare] would appreciate the combination of team spirit and informality, of academic knowledge and humor, of all the elements that go into a great jazz performance." More than half a century later, the organizers of Columbia's "Such Sweet Thunder" event recognized the potential Ellington spoke about when pairing jazz and theater, combining efforts of the Center for Jazz Studies with those of other disciplines, including the department of African American and African diaspora studies, the department of English and comparative literature, and the Core Curriculum. To analyze the suite holistically, event organizers brought in a variety of experts to sit on a panel and discuss their impressions of the work. The Center for Jazz Studies invited Courtney Bryan, GSAS '14, a Tulane professor, pianist, and composer, along with Columbia comparative literature professor Brent Hayes Edwards and University of Pittsburgh flutist and bandleader Nicole M. Mitchell. The event began with an introduction from Professor Robert O'Meally, the founder of Columbia's Center for Jazz Studies and the Zora Neale Hurston professor of English and comparative literature. He asked viewers to think about what it means to adapt a work of literature into music, and the implications of transforming characters into musical motifs, thereby seeing them in a different light. Immediately following O'Meally's introduction, the audience listened to a performance of "Star-Crossed Lovers," the section of the suite based on "Romeo and Juliet," with Stephanie Chow, CC '23, on guitar, Paul Torres, CC '23, on bass, and Andrew Yan, CC '24, on the saxophone. The saxophone slid with a steady, slow rhythm throughout the piece, creating an allusion to the love story's carefully unfolding arc. The use of chromatic scales in the melody fostered a sense of uneasiness, contrasted against the consistency and stability of the bass line. Commentary from the panelists reflected that while Romeo and Juliet's love story seemed stable to the pair, it was considered subversive by others. Ellington and Strayhorn composed the entire suite, including "Star-Crossed Lovers," for a full concert band. Though the trio of undergraduates did not have the resources or sound of the approximately thirty instrumentalists that the songwriters intended for the piece, the students still successfully upheld its integrity. Torres embodied the rhythm section as a bassist, Chow bounced between rhythm and melody on the guitar, and Yan played a consistent melodic line on the saxophone. As the two major components of a traditional 20th-century jazz setup are a rhythm section and a melodic line, the instrument played by each respective member of the trio appropriately supplied the sound originally imagined by Ellington. To Ellington and the undergraduate players alike, the jazz standard offers a unique musical lens through which listeners can view Shakespeare's canonical work. To Yan, the roles that the instrumentalists play are analogous to actors in Shakespeare's Elizabethan era pieces. He also views the plotlines and the dramatic arcs associated with Shakespearean dramas as akin to the ordering of songs in a record or suite. "Shakespeare plays unfold in this symphony of different characters, or different personalities, that intertwine and cross paths in these really ironic ways … like the interaction between the instrument and the musicians in Duke Ellington's band," Yan said. A musical "suite" is a set of orchestral or concert band pieces that a composer orders specifically, allowing the music to mimic the plot of its corresponding theatrical piece. Ellington's iteration of "Such Sweet Thunder" displays the same thoughtfulness with each number representing his musical take on a particular Shakespearean work. Though the trio may have been limited in number, Yan said their performance preserved the emotions and symbolism Ellington intended to depict "Romeo and Juliet" through jazz. After the student performance, the panelists discussed the significance of the Shakespearean mantras Ellington incorporated into his work. Bryan shared her annotations on Ellington's handwritten score, and Edwards provided insight on the specific Shakespearean works to which the pieces corresponded. Mitchell synthesized the ideas of the other panelists by explaining the form through which the band presented the arrangement. "To be able to write a solo in somebody's voice is a pretty profound thing, to write it like you'd improvise it," Edwards said. The panelists also recognized the connections that "Such Sweet Thunder" has with Columbia, noting its adjacency to Harlem, the cultural hub for jazz music in Ellington's days as a composer, and to Shakespeare within the Core Curriculum. As a student studying the Core in tandem with "Such Sweet Thunder," Yan understands the significance that works of Shakespeare and Ellington have within the curriculum of literature and music humanities canons, respectively. Yan believes that Ellington and Shakespeare meet the goal of the Core, which he describes as taking universal ideas about human nature and introducing them to students of Columbia College. "Jazz does not exist in a vacuum … the idea of taking jazz and contextualizing it in the broader world, whether it be the world of the Core, or the world of African American studies, or the world of Shakespeare and history ... really resonates with me," Yan said. "Such Sweet Thunder" embodies the idea that jazz standards can create a story and a world outside of music itself. Listeners of this timeless suite can appreciate the universe that Shakespeare forms in his own work, as well as the relatability of his characters. "If you just close your eyes and imagine green forests, green hills, kings and queens and princes, you can really get that sense from the album and that really languid, summer feeling," Yan said. Staff Writer Ava Roberts can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.