Far East Suite

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Far East Suite is a 1967 concept album by Duke Ellington and his orchestra, co‑composed with longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn and inspired by their State Department–sponsored tours of the Middle East, South Asia, and Japan in the early 1960s. Despite its title, most pieces respond to impressions of places like Syria, India, Iran, and Iraq rather than the “Far East” proper, making it more a travelogue of the Near and Middle East filtered through Ellington’s big‑band language. The nine‑part suite—recorded in December 1966 with a band featuring Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves, Harry Carney, and others—includes movements such as “Tourist Point of View,” “Mount Harissa,” “Blue Pepper (Far East of the Blues),” “Isfahan,” “Depk,” “Ad Lib on Nippon,” and “Amad,” and went on to win the 1968 Grammy for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, Large Group.Musically, the album is often described as an impressionistic blend of Ellington’s blues‑based writing with modal inflections, “exotic” scales, and rhythmic figures loosely drawn from the musics he encountered abroad, without attempting any strict ethnomusicological authenticity. Critics have pointed out that tunes like “Blue Pepper (Far East of the Blues)” and “Isfahan” feel more like vivid postcards—small, fragmented themes and voicings that suggest another place—than direct borrowings, relying on the band’s soloists and Ellington’s orchestral colors to create atmosphere. While some writers have critiqued the “Orientalist” framing, many (including the Penguin Guide to Jazz and AllMusic) regard Far East Suite as a late‑career peak, praising its variety, the strength of individual movements, and the way it captures Ellington and Strayhorn’s partnership near the end of Strayhorn’s life. Show more