He wrote about Ellington's Such Sweet Thunder for our 2007 exhibition, Shakespeare in American Life. Lanier, who is also a musician, has written widely about Shakespeare and modern popular culture (in fact, that's the name of his 2002 book: Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture), and is an expert on pop adaptations of Shakespeare's works. We talked with University of New Hampshire Professor of English Douglas Lanier about the suite, the second chapter of Ellington's career, and how they reflect shifting cultural perceptions of jazz. A year later, Duke Ellington premiered and recorded Such Sweet Thunder, a suite of twelve tunes inspired by the Bard and his characters. Afterward, festival staff asked the legendary composer-at that point, one of jazz's elder statesmen-if he'd consider writing a piece about Shakespeare. In 1956, Duke Ellington gave a series of concerts at Ontario, Canada's Stratford Festival.
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