NJ Jazz Society presents The Billy Strayhorn Orchestra
Swing along with this 15-piece big band that plays the best of Duke Ellington and other favorites from the swing era. A co-presentation with New Jersey Jazz Society.
The Strayhorn band will include Steve Ash on piano and Steve Little on drums.
About Billy Strayhorn
Born in 1915, Billy Strayhorn became an arranger for the renowned Duke Ellington Orchestra at the age of 24. He shared composing, arranging, directing and piano duties with the master himself until his untimely death in 1967. Strayhorn produced prodigious amounts of music for Ellington and many others, including Johnny Hodges, Lena Horne, and The Copasetics. Like Ellington, Strayhorn had a wide-ranging and forward-looking musical mind. Having helped bring big band jazz to its fullest flowering with the Ellington orchestra, and having also been in tune with the first wave of modern jazz or bebop, Strayhorn is often cited as a formative influence by jazz composers and arrangers who came afterward. Strayhorn’s artistic collaboration with Ellington was—like their friendship—very close, so close in artistic terms that in some cases it has been hard to tell who actually wrote what
The band with soloists Freddie Hendrix and Lauren Sevian.
About the Orchestra
Our repertoire includes works Strayhorn alone wrote for the Ellington orchestra, including famous pieces like “Chelsea Bridge” and “Raincheck”; rare, newer versions of hits he wrote for Ellington, such as “Take the A Train”; and rarely heard works which Ellington never recorded, such as “Swing Dance,” “Pentonsilic,” and “Cashmere Cutie.”
Alto saxophonist Michael Hashim has frequently performed and recorded music associated with Duke Ellington and, particularly, Billy Strayhorn. He won a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1989 in support of “Lotus Blossom,” a CD devoted to Strayhorn’s music, and was nominated for British Jazz Album of the Year for a second Strayhorn album, 1999’s “Multicolored Blue.”
Performers in the video sample are as follows:
Trumpet: Seneca Black, Marty Bound, Jordan Sandke, and Freddie Hendrix
Trombone: Clarence Bell, Art Baron, and David Gibson
Saxophone: Michael Hashim, Ed Pazant, Scott Robinson, Tad Shull, and Lauren Sevian
Piano: Mike Ledonne
Bass: Kelly Friesen
Drums: Kenny Washington
Researcher and educator Walter Van de Leur worked for many years to create the orchestrations of the songs we perform using manuscripts written in Strayhorn’s own hand. We would like to thank the Strayhorn Family and Estate for their kind support.
NJ Jazz Society presents The Billy Strayhorn Orchestra
Swing along with this 15-piece big band that plays the best of Duke Ellington and other favorites from the swing era. A co-presentation with New Jersey Jazz Society.
The Strayhorn band will include Steve Ash on piano and Steve Little on drums.
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