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Amazon, Arranger, celebrities, classic compositions, entertainment, jazz giant, Joe Jackson, Keyboardist, Music, Pianist, Razor & Tie Label, time grammy nominee, Vocalist
“I revere Duke Ellington, but I didn’t want this to be a reverent album,” Joe Jackson says of The Duke, his new tribute to American jazz giant Ellington.
Joe Jackson, THE DUKE
Joe Jackson -][- THE DUKE –Mp3– [Razor & Tie Label, 2012] –
True to Jackson’s word, The Duke is a decidedly unconventional salute to Ellington, demonstrating the timeless brilliance of his classic compositions while showcasing Jackson’s sublime skills as an arranger, instrumentalist and vocal interpreter. Although it’s only the second time he’s recorded an album not comprised of his own compositions, The Duke is nonetheless a deeply personal project for Jackson, whose longstanding affinity for Ellington’s pioneering spirit has served as a key inspiration throughout his own three-decades-plus career.
The Duke finds the iconoclastic English singer/composer/arranger/keyboardist and five-time Grammy nominee interpreting 15 Ellington classics over the course of ten tracks, interspersing melodic and rhythmic elements of various compositions in a manner that’s consistent with Ellington’s own freewheeling approach. Rather than emulating the songs’ original big-band settings, Jackson filters the material through his own musical imagination while exploring an assortment of unexpected grooves and textures. The resulting album is a seamless fusion of sounds and styles, whose abundant sense of playfulness is consistent with Ellington’s boundary-breaking attitude. -[Excerpt | Razor & Tie Label]-
::: SOURCE: Razor & Tie Label :::
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