Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite and Oliver Nelson’s Peter and the Wolf

The New School Studio Orchestra (NSSO) celebrates the holidays with Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s The Nutcracker Suite and Oliver Nelson’s arrangement of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf featuring guest artists including Nick Marchione, led by Keller Coker, Dean, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music. The Smithsonian writes of The Nutcracker Suite, “Ellington and Strayhorn did not simply place jazz rhythms over Tchaikovsky's music. Instead, they picked up the notes, recast the beats, communed with the themes, and recreated the work, turning it into something that was at once completely their own and completely Tchaikovsky's. In doing so, they showed that while music may be the universal language, it is spoken with many accents (and therein lies the fun).” Of the 1966 Peter and the Wolf recording of Oliver Nelson’s arrangement of Sergei Prokofiev’s iconic work, AllMusic writes “Oliver Nelson arranged a variety of themes from Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf into a swinging suite featuring the great organist Jimmy Smith. Although there is no verbal narrative on this LP, Nelson's liner notes tell the story, which can actually be followed through the music, and Smith pays respect to the original melodies while making strong statements of his own. [It’s] a classic of its kind.” Presented by the College of Performing Arts at The New School.

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