NOVEL JAZZ SEPTET CELEBRATES THE MUSIC OF DUKE ELLINGTON AND BILLY STRAYHORN!

Novel Jazz will be in performance Mailly Waterfront Park in Bowdoinham on 20 July at 6PM as part of the 2025 Bowdoinham Sundy Summer Concert Series. They will be celebrating Strayhorn’s 110th anniversary this season as well as their 21st year sharing the music of these jazz icons around New England. The mission of the Novel Jazz Septet is to keep the music of Ellington and Strayhorn “alive and swinging.” Between them, Duke and Strays wrote several thousand compositions over their musical careers, two percent of which represent the well-known standards and 98% of which represent rarely heard gems. The Septet will perform standard tunes from the Ellington/Strayhorn repertoire plus newly-arranged compositions that they have unearthed from original recordings, as well as manuscripts from the Ellington Archives of the Smithsonian Museum of American History and the Strayhorn Collection at the Library of Congress, both in Washington D.C. Novel Jazz members have dusted these pieces off, rearranged them for the Septet, and given them a 21st century sound, all of their own. The concert is free.

For more information, navigate your browser to https://www.bowdoinham.com/event/2025-sunday-summer-concert-series. To find out more about the band, navigate your browser to https://www.mainejazz.net/. The Mailly Waterfront Park is located 1 Main Street, Bowdoinham, ME. Remember, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing! So, bop-on over to Mailly Waterfront Park on Sunday 20 July, 2025 for some classic jazz by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn!