#music, The United States’ Greatest Composer…

Duke Ellington is considered America’s greatest composer. By America, I mean only the US in this case. He was born in 1899 in Washington, D.C. but from the mid 1920s, his base was New York City. In the 1930s, he started a long and fruitful collaboration with Billy Strayhorn, pianist, arranger, and composer of «Take the A Train» and others that are now standards.

Ellington is one of my favourite composers and pianists. Besides his music, and he composed thousands of pieces, I really admired his thoughts, his philosophy. Ellington supported the idea that one had to go beyond the limitations of the «classification» one is placed in. One had to go beyond the category. So he considered his music to be, generally speaking, American music.

Duke Ellington died in 1974 in New York City and was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize Special Award for music in 1999.

There is much, much more to this great man of Jazz, well of music in general, America’s classical music, and I urge you to search further. You can search in books and videos, but most importantly, search with your ears…

Here’s classic Duke Ellington:

Cheers…