Celebrants on Wednesday, April 23, 2024, attended a birthday party in which William Shakespeare was feted on the day normally observed for his birth. The party was complete with a cake with icing reading “Happy birthday, Will.” There was pink champagne, a singing of “Happy Birthday,” and a toast to the Bard of Stratford-Upon-Avon. This occurred at the Little Theatre of Alexandrea, where partygoers took the celebration outside into the Shakespeare garden, where every plant is from a Shakespeare play. In some instances, friends came dressed themselves in Elizabethan garb for the birthday festivities.
There was even a humorous touch as participants were offered a wide array of stick-on decals featuring comic likenesses of Shakespeare as well as off-beat Shakespearean quotes, such as “I do desire we may be better strangers.” (“As You Like It”)
The musical entertainment that evening was a special treat from an unexpected source: the Bob Gibson Big Band Orchestra played jazz charts of Duke Ellington, who also has an April birthday, having been born 125 years ago in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 1899. The pairing of these two artists (very different in era, genre, and style) is more natural than it might at first appear, for Ellington wrote a series of songs borrowing titles and recalling themes from Shakespeare.
Little Theatre of Alexandria provided a printed program with excellent notes on these special musical compositions by Ellington and his musical collaborator Billy Strayhorn. The program explains: “In 1956, Duke Ellington gave a series of concerts at Ontario, Canada’s Stratford Festival. Afterward, festival staff asked the legendary composer if he’d consider writing a piece about Shakespeare. A year later, Duke Ellington premiered and recorded ‘Such Sweet Thunder,’ a suite of twelve tunes inspired by the Bard and his characters.” Ellington and his orchestra then recorded the suite for Columbia Records in 1957.
The Gibson Big Band entered into a superb recreation of the Ellington orchestra’s sound in its performance of the suite. In addition, each song was introduced by the quote or scene from the play which inspired the piece. Actors Paul Donahoe, Isabella Keeling, Heather Sanderson, and Eleanore Tapscott performed these relevant Shakespeare portions, sometimes interacting with one another, as in the incantation of the Weird Sisters in “Macbeth” just before the Ellington composition “The Telecasters” was performed. As per the program’s description of “The Telecasters:” “The three witches are played here by the three trombones, and Iago [the villain borrowed from Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’] is a baritone sax. And just to emphasize the loquacity, there are a few moments of very pregnant silence.”
One song, which shares the title “Such Sweet Thunder” with the suite itself, was inspired by Hippolyta’s” “I never heard / So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) This piece was in the suave and languid early Ellington swing style. Other songs, such as “Sonnet for Caesar” and “The Telecasters” mentioned above, were styled much more along the lines of modern jazz. In a slightly updated approach from the original Ellington recordings, an electric guitar and electric piano were used, yet blended into the mix well.
“Lady Mac” had a wonderful trumpet solo and a cohesive display of the excellent Gibson Big Band reed section. There was also some ragtime-influenced piano, for Ellington noted whimsically of Lady Macbeth: “Though she was a lady of noble birth, we suspect there was a little ragtime in her soul.”
“The Star-Crossed Lovers” (performed after a brief enactment of Juliet’s “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” monologue) commenced with a romantic piano introduction and a soulful saxophone solo. Yet the piano solo at the conclusion of the piece ended not in a traditional cadence, leaving the audience in want of closure—much like the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet wish in vain that the family feud between the Montagues and Capulets would end.
The title of “The Circle of Fourths” which ended the evening’s Ellington set is a title wordplay on the music theory idea of the circle of fifths as an orderly chart of key signatures. The irony of the piece, however, is that it sounds spontaneous, with a saxophone solo playing countless accidentals. Providing a Shakespeare tie-in, the program states of “The Circle of Fourths:” “The final part of the suite is inspired by Shakespeare himself and the four major parts of his artistic contribution: tragedy, comedy, history, and the sonnets.”
“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” quoting again from “Romeo and Juliet,” but this unusual blend of Shakespeare and Ellington will likely return next year, note the organizers, and indeed may become a tradition at the Little Theatre of Alexandria!
