The Ellington Effect workshops take place once a month, and David picks a different Ellington composition to analyze for each one.  In about two hours, he talks through the piece note by note, line by line, analyzing the piece at both macro and micro levels.

David Berger has studied the music of Duke Ellington for over 50 years, and has transcribed over 500 Ellington and Strayhorn arrangements and compositions.  Because of this, he is able to make connections to Ellington's other pieces, talk about trends and eras in Ellington's writing, and discuss the influences of changing personnel on the music over time.

At the end of each workshop, David answers questions for a half hour or so.  These are always lively and fascinating, as workshop attendees tend to include some highly knowledgable Ellingtonians as well as plenty of intelligent musicians who ask insightful questions.

An early Ellington masterpiece, clearly one of his best and most memorable, that remained in his repertoire for his entire career, Black And Tan Fantasy (sometimes spelled "Fantasie") is a true quodlibet--a piece that combines various styles and genres of music including sacred and profane. 

 

Throughout Ellington's career he combined the blues with other forms. This is an early example.  We will confront this technique later in such classics as The Mooche, Merry Go-Round, Sepia Panorama, Mainstem, Happy Go-Lucky Local, Idiom '59 Part 2, and many others. 

 

Black and Tan Fantasy begins with a 12-bar minor blues based on The Holy City, a hymn Bubber Miley's mother used to sing to Duke's star trumpeter as a child.  It's followed by a chromatic 8-bar repeated theme in the parallel major key. The remainder of the piece is a series of blues choruses (trombone, trumpet, piano, trombone, trumpet) ending with a quote of Chopin's Funeral March in the parallel minor.

 

This might not sound like much out of the ordinary, but each chorus has its own distinct character through use of the soloists' unique personalities and variety of accompaniments.  

 

As for the meaning of the title: a Black and Tan was a night club, like the original Cotton Club, where the Ellington band later performed nightly, that employed black entertainers and staff attended by mixed race clientele. Before Ellington went into the Cotton Club, the policy changed to allowing only white patrons. This continued until 1935, when it again became black and tan.

 

Instrumentation:

Otto Hardwick and Harry Carney, alto sax

Rudy Jackson, tenor sax

Louis Metcalf and Jabbo Smith (subbing for Miley), trumpet

Tricky Sam Nanton, trombone 

Fred Guy, banjo

Duke Ellington, piano

Wellman Braud, bass

Sonny Greer, drums