Music

Harvey G. Cohen: Duke Ellington's America

by •
November 2010, no. 326
Music

Harvey G. Cohen: Duke Ellington's America

by •
November 2010, no. 326

America’s incomparable composer and jazzman

Michael Morley

 

Duke Ellington’s America
by Harvey G. Cohen
University of Chicago Press (Footprint Books), $69 hb, 688 pp, 9780226112633

 

Early in this magisterial and exhaustively researched examination of Duke Ellington’s role in American music and society, the author offers a succinct summary of the musician’s significance as an American artist. It is worth quoting at length, as it encapsulates most of the questions addressed over the book’s 577 pages of text and almost 100 densely packed pages of notes:

Michael Morley

Michael Morley is Emeritus Professor of Drama at Flinders University. He has written theatre and music reviews and articles for a variety of publications, including Theatre Australia, the National Times, The Australian, the Australian Financial Review, Opera News (New York), the Kurt Weill Newsletter, the Sondheim Review, the Adelaide Review, and Australian Book Review. He has also contributed translations for the English edition of the collected poems of Alfred Brendel.

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