When Duke Ellington turned cathedral into concert hall

A concert filmed at Coventry Cathedral 60 years ago this week by composer and pianist Duke Ellington stands as one of the most significant moments in British jazz history, according to one expert.

In February 1966, Ellington and his orchestra performed his Concert of Sacred Music at the cathedral, composing a new work especially for the occasion and drawing huge demand for tickets.

He said of his religious works at the time: "It's one of the most satisfying things I've ever done, and the most important.

"It's a personal statement. It's a personal statement about belief."

Ellington's performance on 21 February ended his European tour, which had seen him play dates with Ella Fitzgerald.

His trip to the city "was a worldwide celebrity doing something really special," said Dr Nicolas Pillai, assistant professor at University College Dublin.

"There had been a huge boom in the interest in jazz here from the late 1950s onwards, with clubs like Ronnie Scott's appearing," he explained, causing a growth in the British scene.

"But Ellington playing Coventry was a great example showing there was still tremendous excitement when a US star of that calibre came to England".

"And it was an unusual moment, as it was the only date on his 1966 British tour when he played his sacred music," he said.

The new cathedral, designed by Basil Spence, had been consecrated in 1962 after the original was destroyed by German bombers during World War Two.

"It's an important moment for jazz in Britain, a great artist coming and playing a concert in what would have been an unusual space - this modernist cathedral," explained Pillai.

It was also an important moment for Ellington, he added, "because it's him consolidating his legacy as an artist who doesn't just play band music or jazz, but sacred music, also."

There are stories surrounding how the cathedral underestimated interest in the concert, he explained.

"They announced that the tickets were going to be available from the cathedral one morning and then hundreds of people turned up and they're turned away because of the demand.

"There was a real sense of disquiet."

"People write letters to the Coventry Evening Telegraph saying it was a disgrace, so it's also a significant moment in the history of the cathedral as a public venue."

One of those who got to see Ellington play that February was Toby Wood, who had travelled with his father from Peterborough without a ticket in an attempt to catch the band rehearsing ahead of the show.

Wood said: "We sat towards the back because my dad was scared stiff that someone would come and say 'you can't listen to this, you've got to leave'.

"After a couple of tunes we moved forward and forward and we ended up on the fourth row sitting there as quietly as we could trying not to be noticed."

Ellington's cathedral concert was captured on film by ABC Midlands and broadcast as part of its Easter programming.

The piece specially written for the concert, Come Easter, was only ever performed in Coventry that night.

The black and white recording was thought missing for over 50 years, but a badly degraded copy was found in a StudioCanal archive by Pillai in 2017 while he was working at Birmingham City University.

"Because the concert had only been labelled by its title, Celebration," he explained, "they didn't know it was an Ellington concert".

With the help of Dudley-based TV archive company Kaleidoscope it was restored and released on DVD.

"As a researcher you always hope that you'll go into an archive and find something that may have been forgotten or mislabelled."

The discovery was "thrilling," he added.

"It's an invaluable record of a landmark moment in Ellington's career but also an exciting depiction of the new cathedral, colliding jazz with modernist religious architecture in a way that had never been seen before".

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