ELLINGTON AND GERSHWIN WITH DUDAMEL THURSDAY JULY 13, 2023 8PM

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Gustavo Dudamel, conductor

Patina Miller, special guest vocalist

ELLINGTON, Three Black Kings (c. 15 minutes)

Arr. HENDERSON King of the Magi King Solomon

Martin Luther King

VARIOUS

Song selections to be announced (c. 25 minutes)

Patina Miller, vocalist

INTERMISSION

ELLINGTON, Night Creature (c. 17 minutes)

Arr. BERGER Blind Bug

Stalking Monster

Dazzling Creature

GERSHWIN An American in Paris (c. 17 minutes)

Moritaka Kina is chief piano technician for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.

This performance is generously supported by Tylie Jones and Family

Pianos provided by Steinway Piano Gallery—Beverly Hills

Programs and artists subject to change.

Three Black Kings

Duke Ellington (1899–1974)

Arr. Luther Henderson

Collaboration, one might say, is the essence of jazz. Even Ellington’s Three Black Kings, his final composition, proves the point in its own way. Ellington had nearly completed the piece before he died. But he rarely wrote the final notes of a composition until the day of the premiere, leaving his son Mercer, a successful bandleader and composer in his own right, to guess how it should ultimately be completed. The great composer and arranger Luther Henderson orchestrated a version that Mercer premiered at a tribute concert for his father in 1976—where First Lady Betty Ford gave the downbeat. Alvin Ailey choreographed a ballet to accompany the piece, which his troupe performed throughout the 1976/77 season. And Ellington’s longtime friend Maurice Peress, an esteemed conductor, eventually rescored it for symphony orchestra. It took many hands to create the piece as we know it today.

Intended (in Mercer’s words) as a “eulogy for Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Three Black Kings continues Ellington’s series of narrative pieces on a grand symphonic scale—a series that includes Black, Brown, and Beige (1943), Harlem (1950), and Night Creature (1955). Traversing centuries, each movement captures the psychological depth of its respective subject. The first, depicting King Balthazar (the black king of the Nativity), features propulsive percussion sounds that explode into ravishing, exotic melodies in the strings. The episodic second, which fluctuates between sultry strings accompanied by harp and upbeat passages reminiscent of Ellington’s jazz orchestra, evokes King Solomon’s taste for love more than his fabled wisdom. The gospelinflected third, complete with subtle tambourine backbeats, is a fitting tribute to the Reverend Doctor King himself—a man who, as Nina Simone put it in her own music eulogy, “had seen the mountaintop, and knew he could not stop, always living with the threat of death ahead.”

—Douglas Shadle

Song Selections

Even more than piano, the jazz orchestra was Duke Ellington’s primary instrument, and he showed himself to be a master of color, texture, and timbral e ect. Most of his songs started as instrumental compositions, with lyrics being added later. Ellington and his contemporary George Gershwin both contributed standards to what became known as the Great American Songbook, and they paid close attention to each other’s work. Gershwin frequented the Cotton Club where Ellington and his band performed in the 1920s, and Gershwin biographer Howard Pollack suggests that Ellington’s “Creole Love Call” influenced An American in Paris. But where Ellington approached his songs as instrumental jazz first, Gershwin’s songs show the Tin Pan Alley tradition, or in the case of selections from Porgy and Bess, a modified European opera aesthetic. —Ricky O’Bannon

Night Creature

Duke Ellington

Arr.

David Berger

The advent of long-playing records proved significant in Ellington’s continued development of expanded forms. Night Creature (1955, 1963), which features full orchestra plus saxophones, was orchestrated by Ellington and Luther Henderson as a sort of three-movement concerto grosso, a jazz band as collective soloist within a symphony orchestra, and was recorded in 1963 on the album Symphonic Ellington. Ellington’s music had its roots in dance, and although not originally conceived as a dance, Night Creature has been successfully choreographed, most notably by Alvin Ailey in 1975 for his American Dance Theater. Ellington’s own scenario for his three-part tone poem reveals:

“Night creatures, unlike stars, do not come out at night—they come on, each thinking that before the night is out he or she will be the star. They are the restless cool whose exotic or erotic animations, no matter how cool, beg for recognition, mainly from the queen, that dazzling woman who reigns over all night creatures. She is the theme of the third movement, sitting there on her high place and singing, ‘I want to be acknowledged’ (in D major), or ‘Who but me shall be desired?’ (in A-flat), or ‘Who has the taste for my choreography?’

(in A minor). After having made each of her subjects feel that Her Majesty sings only for him or her, who is individually the coolest or craziest, her high-toned highness rises and snaps her fingers. As they stomp o handclapping, everybody scrambles to be in place, wailing and winging into the most overindulged form of up-and-outness.”

—John Henken

An American In Paris

George Gershwin

(1898–1937)

Since his early teens George Gershwin had been enamored with the music he heard uptown in Harlem, a region that was quickly becoming the center of the jazz universe. Indeed, his first attempt at a more serious composition—a mini-opera called Blue Monday—was a story about characters in a Harlem nightclub. Its first presentation was on Broadway, however, with white singers performing in blackface; it was a flop and received only one performance.

Undisturbed, Gershwin tried another classical/jazz merging, the so-called “Experiment in Modern Music” (as it was billed for its 1924 premiere): Rhapsody in Blue. He followed this with his Concerto in F, which some writers called “The Jazz Piano Concerto.” These two works were popularly successful, though critics were still guarded with their praise.

It was a trip abroad that inspired Gershwin to work in earnest on a recent commission he had received from the New York Philharmonic. His idea for the new work solidified as he was shopping for Parisian taxi horns to take back to the US: capture the tumult of Paris’ streets in music and create a concert work that didn’t center around the piano.

Back in New York, Gershwin finished An American in Paris, which he subtitled “A Tone Poem for Orchestra.” In an interview in the August 18, 1928, edition of Musical America, he said of the work: “this new piece, really a rhapsodic ballet, is the most modern music I have ever attempted.”

Though not a critical success, An American in Paris was wildly successful with audiences—and Hollywood—and established Gershwin as an original voice in concert halls worldwide, a voice that resonates to this day. —Dave

Kopplin

Gustavo Dudamel

To read about Music & Artistic Director GUSTAVO DUDAMEL, please turn to page 12

Patina Miller

Patina Miller stars as Raquel Thomas in the STARZ original series

Power Book III: Raising Kanan, which is currently in production on its third season. Last summer, Patina made her highly anticipated Broadway return in the critically acclaimed revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 musical, Into the Woods. Patina received rave reviews starring as the Witch, a role she played during a Hollywood Bowl production of the musical in 2019. This marked the first time in eight years that she graced the Broadway stage since she won a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical in 2013. This year, Miller won a Grammy Award in the Best Musical Theater Album category for her work on the cast recording of Into the Woods She previously starred as press coordinator Daisy Grant in the CBS hit drama series Madam Secretary. She also starred as Charlotte Jenkins on the Civil War-era drama Mercy Street, PBS’ first original drama in more than a decade. Miller also served as the narrator in Jim Henson’s animated children’s series Word Party

In 2021, Miller starred in The Many Saints of Newark, the feature film prequel to David Chase’s award-winning series The Sopranos. She made her featurefilm debut as Commander Paylor in Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1. The first part of the famous trilogy’s finale was released in November 2014. Miller then reprised her role in the final installment of the series, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, which was released in November 2015.

Miller starred as the Leading Player in the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Stephen Schwartz’s 1972 musical Pippin, directed by Diane Paulus. Miller successfully put a contemporary twist on a role originated by award-winning actor Ben Vereen and mastered the Fosse movements that the show relies so heavily on. Miller earned a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, as well as a Broadway.com Audience Choice Award. She was also a Drama League Award honoree and Fred and Adele Astaire Award nominee. She previously performed the role of Leading Player in the American Repertory Theater production of Pippin (2012–2013).

Miller made her Broadway debut in the 2011 season as the gutsy nightclub-singer-turned-nun Deloris Van Cartier in the stage adaptation of Sister Act, a performance that earned her a first Tony nomination as well as Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations. She was also a Theatre World Award winner.

Miller also starred in multiple OBroadway productions, including Ragtime at Avery Fisher Hall, a City Center Encores! production of Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’sLost in the Stars, and the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Romantic Poetry. Miller also appeared in the Public Theater’s preBroadway revival of Hair during its 2008 run at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, also under the direction of Diane Paulus. Her regional theater credits include First You Dream, a Kander and Ebb revue at the Kennedy Center; Sister Act at the Alliance Theatre and Pasadena Playhouse; and the Philadelphia Theater Company production of Being Alive. Prior to her numerous theater roles, Miller appeared in the renowned daytime soap opera All My Children

Miller performed her first solo concert at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts during its 2013/14 season. She made her New York City debut in February 2014 as part of Lincoln Center Theater’s “American Songbook” series, which subsequently aired on PBS.

Miller received a degree in musical theater from Carnegie Mellon University. She currently resides in New York City.