Chuck Redd and his Festival jazz unit pay tribute to the incomparable pianist, composer and bandleader Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974) who was a major force on the American jazz scene from the mid-’20s, when he moved his successful Washington DC band to New York, until his death in 1974. Achieving solid creds in Harlem and New York as The Washingtonians from 1923-26, the Ellington band found national prominance as the house band at the Cotton Club through the Club’s weekly national radio broadcasts, which led to successful national and international touring and recording through the 1930s and, excepting the post-WWII big band collapse though the end of his career. In 1939 he began a 30-year partnership with Billy Strayhorn, and in the ‘50s they took on longer forms and film scoring. A master of the short form, Ellington wrote and collaborated on over 1,000 compositions and covered many more, leaving a brilliant, enduring, always rewarding body of work. For his tribute this summer, Chuck focuses largely on Ellington’s post-Cotton Club book, including the early “Mood Indigo”, “Sophisticated Lady”, and “It Don’t Mean A Thing” then turning to gems like “I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart” “Perdido”, “Take The ‘A’ Train”, “I’m Checkin’ Out, Goom-bye”, “I Got It Bad”, “Squatty Roo”, “Main Stem”, “Prelude To A Kiss”, and more.