The Yale Concert Band – Yale’s premier wind ensemble – (Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director) and the Yale Jazz Ensembles Big Band (Wayne Escoffery, Music Director) will present “Side by Side: The Nutcracker Swings.” Tickets: $15 general admission ($10 students). Buy tickets here: https://sidebyside_nutcrackerswings.eventbrite.com.

In this performance, the Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite, as arranged for concert band by Mayhew L. Lake, will be performed alongside the Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn setting for jazz band. Celebrate the holiday season with this study in interpretation, in two classic arrangements of The Nutcracker Suite.

One of the most popular orchestral works ever created for ballet, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker recounts the story of Clara, a young girl, who dreams that the nutcracker she received as a Christmas gift has turned into a handsome prince. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s Nutcracker Suite is a reinvention of the original, a jazz “retelling” of the holiday classic in which Ellington has scored the Suite (drawn from the full ballet) for standard big band and renamed the movements to reflect his American “take” on the Russian original:
• Overture
• Toot Toot Tootie Toot (Dance of the Mirlitons, or Reed-Pipes)
• Peanut Brittle Brigade (March)
• Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy)
• Entr’acte
• The Volga Vouty (Russian Dance)
• Chinoiserie (Chinese Dance)
• Danse of the Floreadores (Waltz of the Flowers)
• Arabesque Cookie (Arabian Dances)

Info: https://bands.yale.edu