Duke Ellington's Far East Suite

Far East Suite is a 1967 concept album by American jazz musician Duke Ellington, inspired by his group's tour of Asia. Ellington and longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn wrote the compositions. Strayhorn died in May 1967, making Far East Suite one of the last albums recorded during his life to feature his compositions. The album won the Grammy Award in 1968 for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance – Large Group or Soloist with Large Group. The album was reissued in 1995 with four previously unreleased alternate takes. In 2003, Bluebird Records issued the album on CD with additional bonus takes. Background The album's title is something of a misnomer. As critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton wrote, "It really should have been The Near East Suite." Strictly speaking, only one track – "Ad Lib on Nippon", inspired by a 1964 tour of Japan – is concerned with a country in the "Far East". The rest of the music on the album was inspired by a world tour undertaken by Ellington and his orchestra in 1963, which included performances in Damascus, Amman, Ramall'ah, Kabul, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore (now Bengaluru), Madras (now Chennai), Bombay (now Mumbai), Calcutta (now Kolkata), Columbo, Kandy, Dacca (now Dhaka), Lahore, Karachi, Tehran, Isfahan, Abadan, Baghdad, and Beirut. The band arrived in Ankara but U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated the day before its concert, and the State Department cancelled the tour. Scheduled performances in Istanbul, Nicosia, Cairo, Alexandria, Athens, Thessaloniki, and a week added to the tour for Yugoslavia were cancelled.