| Far East Suite | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | June 1967 | |||
| Recorded | December 19–21, 1966 | |||
| Studio | New York City | |||
| Genre | Jazz,big band | |||
| Length | 45:14 | |||
| Label | Bluebird/RCA | |||
| Producer | Brad McKuen | |||
| Duke Ellington chronology | ||||
| ||||
Far East Suite is a 1967concept album by American jazz musicianDuke Ellington, inspired by his group's tour ofAsia. Ellington and longtime collaboratorBilly Strayhorn wrote the compositions.
Strayhorn died in May 1967, makingFar East Suite one of the last albums recorded during his life to feature his compositions. The album won the Grammy Award in 1968 forBest Instrumental Jazz Performance – Large Group or Soloist with Large Group.
The album was reissued in 1995 with four previously unreleased alternate takes.[1] In 2003,Bluebird Records issued the album on CD with additional bonus takes.
The album's title is something of a misnomer. As criticsRichard Cook andBrian Morton wrote, "It really should have beenTheNear East Suite."[2] Strictly speaking, only one track – "Ad Lib on Nippon", inspired by a 1964 tour ofJapan – is concerned with a country in the "Far East". The rest of the music on the album was inspired by a world tour undertaken by Ellington and his orchestra in 1963, which included performances inDamascus,Amman,Ramall'ah,Kabul,New Delhi,Hyderabad, Bangalore (nowBengaluru), Madras (nowChennai), Bombay (nowMumbai), Calcutta (nowKolkata),Colombo,Kandy, Dacca (nowDhaka),Lahore,Karachi,Tehran,Isfahan,Abadan,Baghdad, andBeirut. The band arrived inAnkara but U.S. PresidentJohn F. Kennedy was assassinated the day before its concert, and theState Department cancelled the tour. Scheduled performances inIstanbul,Nicosia,Cairo,Alexandria,Athens,Thessaloniki, and a week added to the tour for Yugoslavia were cancelled.
In early 1964, while on tour inEngland, Ellington and Strayhorn performed four pieces of music for the first time ("Mynah", "Depk", "Agra", and "Amad"), which they called "Expressions of the Far East". By the time of the recording sessions in December 1966 Ellington and Strayhorn had added four more pieces. One, the latter's "Isfahan" was formerly known as "Elf", and had in fact been written months prior to the 1963 tour.
Ellington very rarely performed the pieces that made upThe Far East Suite. Cook and Morton have suggested that "Isfahan", which later became a jazz standard, "is arguably the most beautiful item in Ellington's and Strayhorn's entire output."[2] In 1999,Anthony Brown recorded the entire suite with his Asian-American Orchestra. Unlike the 1967 album, Brown's version used Eastern instruments along with standard jazz instruments.
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [1] |
| Penguin Guide to Jazz | [2] |
Cook and Morton, writing forThe Penguin Guide to Jazz, give the album a four-star rating (of a possible four), noting that "Ellington's ability to communicate points of contact and conflict between cultures, assimilating theblues to Easternmodes in tracks like 'Blue Pepper (Far East of the Blues),' never sounds unduly self-conscious. This remains a postwar peak."[2]Scott Yanow, writing forAllmusic, calls this one of Ellington's "more memorable recordings,"[1] describing it as an example of "Ellington and Strayhorn in their late prime," and as such, "quite essential."[3]
Participating inDown Beat's Blindfold Test shortly after the album's release, composer-arrangerClare Fischer was played track #7, "Agra." A longtime admirer and student of Ellington's work, Fischer had no trouble identifying the artist, awarding the track five stars, citing both "Duke's immensely creative writing" and his inexplicable ability to transcend "this same old tired instrumentation of trumpets, trombones and saxophones," while "perfect[ly] utilizing the men's specific sounds." In addition, Fischer praised Ellington's ability to "take an exotic-sounding idea and create something – you might call it sophisticated crudity. It gives both qualities that I look for – an earthy quality and the sophisticated quality."[4]
(All compositions by Ellington & Strayhorn except 9. by Ellington.)
