A culmination of the late Ellington & Strayhorn's work, depicting travel memories through sound.
A Grammy Award-winning big band work that fuses cross-cultural melodies and modal development, this masterpiece demonstrates the creativity of Ellington's late career.
This suite is based on impressions from Strayhorn's tour of the Orient, and Johnny Hodges' alto saxophone leads the elegant melody. In "Isfahan" and "Blue Pepper," exotic motifs are reconstructed using jazz idioms, fusing brass and rhythm. This is an important work from the period shortly after Strayhorn's death.