Colors / Composer

Colors often described Ellington's music, color helped define the orchestrations, and color communicated the social and racial tensions of the day. He more resembled a painter and crafter of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles than he did a conventional dance band arranger.

Mood Indigo

He went along with the soon-cemented breakdown of brass, reeds (replacing the strings of classical and earlier pop music orchestras) and rhythm section, but for Ellington this was only a starting point and hardly the final destination. He introduced exotic sounds from Africa, Far East and New Orleans.

How do you “paint” colors in music? Ellington provided contrast, such as beginning in a minor key and modulating to a major key in Black and Tan Fantasie.

Listen to Black and Tan Fantasie (0:00) >

Rhythmic drive is more than just a musical element. The colorful, insistent rhythms define Ellington's music as much as the colors of his arrangements. Ellington's musicians played from a chart, a printed score or hand-written manuscript with notes and meter – all the elements of a classical score.

But the chart might only be the frame of the painting, allowing jazz musicians to do what they do so well – improvise.

Mood Indigo makes a permanent mark in music history because of its novel combination of instruments – and more specifically which instruments take the high notes and which ones play the low. Here Ellington displays his artistic ability to paint with sound in a way no one else was able to at this time.

Listen to Mood Indigo (0:00) >

Use the comment section below to respond: Can you think of other examples of creating working in multimedia, like Duke Ellington did when he meshed work in groups of musicians with live audiences and film?

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