Anthony Coleman

pianist, composer

Duke Ellington

If I start to talk about Ellington it would be a conversation of several hours - at the very least. He was really the key figure in my early artistic life. He was my model; he was my guru. Everybody who knew me when I was growing up knew this. It was a beautiful accident of history that I was able to spend those last couple of years of High School in close contact with the Ellington Band and I got to spend some time at Duke’s elbow. Of course I was too young for any of this, but Thank God I was able to do it, because had it been just a couple years later it would not have happened. But I also have to say that I’m very lucky that I was marked by Monk and Cecil Taylor at the same time, because it made me understand that taking Ellingtonisms literally was not going to be the way that I could honor Duke’s importance to me in the deepest way. I think it’s a shame that this aspect of Cecil’s work – his radical reshaping of Duke’s influence on him - is still so polarizing for some people. I guess it speaks to its power, but I still find people so limited in their inability to hear the way that a great artist transforms influence into their own vision when the stylistic markers are pretty radically different.