This arrangement is made possible by support from Michael Hostetler and Erica Pascal.

From his first long-term gig at a Manhattan dance club in 1923 to his death in 1974, Duke Ellington used his perch as a bandleader and pianist to create a legendary catalog of songs and larger jazz compositions. His most ambitious creations were the large, complex suites he wrote for his own touring ensemble, dating back to the groundbreaking Black, Brown and Beige Suite he introduced at his Carnegie Hall debut in 1943. As the choreographer, Alvin Ailey later said of Ellington, “His band was his Stradivarius.”

After the ensemble toured the Middle East, Turkey and India in 1963 on an itinerary organized by the State Department, Ellington and his longtime writing partner Billy Strayhorn collaborated on a nine-part collection of sound impressions that the band recorded in 1966, the Far East Suite. “Blue Pepper” — subtitled “Far East of the Blues” — stands apart from the expected Ellington vibe with its groovy backbeat, but it demonstrates how nimbly Ellington and Strayhorn synthesized the tried-and-true swing band sound with modern rock-and-roll and Eastern inflections, especially in the classic recording with a solo from veteran alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges. “Bluebird of Delhi,” penned by Strayhorn alone, celebrates the mynah bird that lingered near their hotel India, singing a melodious call that inspired the chirpy clarinet theme.

Aaron Grad ©2022

In the wake of two well-received ballets set in the American West — Billy the Kid (1938) and Rodeo (1942) — Aaron Copland began Appalachian Spring in 1943. He created the ballet for the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, and he worked under the title Ballet for Martha until not long before the premiere, when Graham suggested Appalachian Spring, borrowing a phrase from Hart Crane’s poem “The Bridge.”

Created for the 500-seat auditorium at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, this ballet needed a suitably compact pit orchestra, so Copland used just thirteen instruments in the original version. The next year he arranged most of the ballet into a concert suite for orchestra, and his publisher later added the option heard here, which preserves the original chamber ensemble scoring while adopting the structure of the concert suite.

The wonder of Appalachian Spring is how it achieves so much using such simple and familiar musical ingredients. The first section assembles its hazy wash of consonant sonorities by enunciating plain triads and the resonant intervals of fourths and fifths. The following section energizes similarly basic materials — octave leaps, triadic intervals and descending major scales — into spry dance music. There is a tender scene for the young couple, a lively romp depicting the revivalist and his dancing minions, and then a brisk solo dance for the bride, which dissipates into a return of the gentle, triadic wash of the beginning.

The famous section that follows, starting with a theme in the clarinet, presents the tune of Simple Gifts, a Shaker dance song written in 1848 by Joseph Brackett. The humble melody fits seamlessly into the homespun, diatonic language of Copland’s score, and its increasingly grand variations rise to a transcendental climax.

Aaron Grad ©2021