‘He moved with all the influences of the time, from blues to bebop and the moderns, and transmuted them into his own…’ (Alistair Cooke). For most of his long and illustrious career Duke Ellington was a major figure in jazz, and an active participant in the evolution of recordings spanning the years 1923 to 1973. By the early 1930s he was already established as a top bandleader, and celebrated both as an arranger and a composer in his own right. Always willing to adapt, Duke mirrored and often anticipated new directions and it is to this that we owe the existence of many of the great standards recorded on this CD in arrangements by Richard Hayman.