NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS UNITED NATIONS DAY CONCERT TO BE HELD IN GENERAL ASSEMBLY HALL

Press Release

NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS UNITED NATIONS DAY CONCERT TO BE HELD IN GENERAL ASSEMBLY HALL

Jazz Orchestra and Guest Artists to Perform Musical Tribute to Duke Ellington

In honour of United Nations Day, an all-jazz concert will take place on Friday 22 October at 7 p.m. in the General Assembly Hall. The concert, co-sponsored by the United Nations, the Duke Ellington Foundation and Over the Edge Records, is a musical tribute to jazz musician Duke Ellington on the one hundredth anniversary of his birthday.

Theo-Ben Gurirab, President of the fifty-fourth session of the General Assembly, and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan will address the audience. Gillian Martin Sorensen, Assistant Secretary-General for External Relations, will open the programme.

The concert, titled “We Loved You Madly”, will feature the Duke Ellington Orchestra, with George Duke as musical director, and the Billy Taylor Trio. Guest performers will include Nancy Wilson, Eartha Kitt, Gregory Hines, Bobby Short, Lena Horne, Jerry Butler, the Esther Marrow Gospel Singers, Dianne Reeves, Grady Tate, Kenny Burrel, Take 6, The Dells, Marcus Printup, Ernie Andrews, Jon Hendricks and others.

This will not be the first time Duke Ellington’s music has been heard at the United Nations; Mr. Ellington and his orchestra performed here at an observance of Human Rights Day on 10 December 1970.

The music of Duke Ellington has enjoyed an immense and enduring popularity around the world. Musician Bobby Short says that “Taking his chances with a sometimes capricious and uninformed public, not to mention the so-called musical savants of the day, he walked alone and dared to compose and to perform music that many listeners found too esoteric. The very fact that these earlier compositions are regular fare for today’s jazz performers is full testimony to the innovative and progressive thinking of Ellington, the musician. No other American composer and his work have spoken so eloquently of the importance of jazz as perhaps our country’s most unique cultural contribution to the world.”

The Duke Ellington Foundation was founded to honour the accomplishments of Mr. Ellington through the promotion of diverse educational and cultural activities to encourage participation in the arts. The Foundation recently established a programme

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entitled Ellington International Distance Education in the Arts (Ellington IDEA) to provide arts education and instruction to students and teachers around the world through the use of electronic media.

United Nations Day Concerts have been a tradition since 1954, when Secretary- General Dag Hammarskjöld invited the Symphony of the Air (formerly the NBC Symphony Orchestra) to perform in the General Assembly Hall. Recent years have seen the introduction of concerts of popular music, in addition to the more traditional concerts of classical music.

For further information, please call (212) 963-6923; for media accreditation, (212) 963-6934; for United Nations television coverage, (212) 963-7650.

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