The Far East Suite

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The Far East Suite
The Far East Suite cover
Studio album by Duke Ellington
Released 1967
Recorded December 1966
Genre Jazz
Length 60:54
Label Bluebird/RCA
Producer Brad McKuen
Professional reviews
Duke Ellington chronology
The Popular Duke Ellington
(1967)		 The Far East Suite
(1967)		 ...And His Mother Called Him Bill
(1968)

The Far East Suite is an album by Duke Ellington and his orchestra, recorded in New York City on 19 December to 21 December 1966. The nine compositions on the original album were all composed by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn (except for one by Ellington); a 1995 reissue (called somewhat misleadingly The Far East Suite — Special Mix) added four previously unreleased alternative takes. In 2003, Bluebird Records issued the LP on a digipak with additional bonus takes.

The album's title is something of a misnomer, since only one track – "Ad Lib on Nippon", inspired by a 1964 tour of Japan – is strictly speaking concerned with a country in the "Far East". The rest of the music on the album was inspired by a world tour undertaken by Ellington and his orchestra in 1963, which took in [[Beirut], Amman, Kabul, New Delhi, Sri Lanka, Tehran, Madras, Mumbai, Baghdad, and Cairo (visits to Istanbul, Nicosia, Cairo, Alexandria, Athens, and Thessaloniki were postponed when the news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy reached the tour party).

In early 1964, while on tour in England, Ellington and Strayhorn performed four pieces of music for the first time ("Mynah", "Depk", "Agra", and "Amad"), which they called "Expressions of the Far East". By the time of the recording sessions in late 1966 Ellington and Strayhorn had added four more pieces. One, the latter's "Isfahan" was formerly known as "Elf", and had in fact been written months prior to the 1963 tour.

Ellington very rarely performed the pieces that made up The Far East Suite. "Isfahan" later became a jazz standard, while the LP had a big impact on the Asian American jazz movement. In 1999, Anthony Brown recorded the entire suite with his Asian-American Orchestra. Unlike the 1967 album, Brown's version used Eastern instruments along with standard jazz instruments.

[edit] Track listing

(All compositions by Ellington & Strayhorn except 9. by Ellington.)

  1. "Tourist Point of View" – 5:09
  2. "Bluebird of Delhi (Mynah)" – 3:18
  3. "Isfahan" – 4:02
  4. "Depk" – 2:38
  5. "Mount Harissa" – 7:40
  6. "Blue Pepper (Far East of the Blues)" – 3:00
  7. "Agra" – 2:35
  8. "Amad" – 4:26
  9. "Ad Lib on Nippon" – 11:34
    Bonus tracks
  10. "Tourist Point of View" (alternative take) – 4:58
  11. "Bluebird of Delhi (Mynah)" (alternative take) – 3:08
  12. "Isfahan" (alternative take) – 4:11
  13. "Amad" (alternative take) – 4:15

[edit] Personnel

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