Luther Henderson III ’71E, ’73E (MM) chooses Eastman’s Ensemble Library as home for his father’s Duke Ellington arrangements.
Early in 1970, famed musical director and orchestrator Luther Henderson Jr. brought his new show, Purlie, to the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. The musical was soon to open on Broadway, and Henderson chose to iron out the kinks at the school where his son, Luther Henderson III ’71E, ’73E (MM), was a student.
Testing a Broadway show in an out-of-town venue was a common practice, and often the conductor had to simplify parts for the less experienced orchestra. But this orchestra was composed of Eastman faculty members.
Henderson III recalls his dad telling him the next day, “you’re going to a better music school than I did. And I went to Juilliard.”
Henderson III is a professor emeritus of music and humanities at Los Angeles City College. After Eastman, he earned a doctor of musical arts in orchestra conducting at the University of Texas at Austin and embarked on a career in music education.
His father, who died in 2003, grew up in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, where his neighbor was the legendary jazz pianist and composer Duke Ellington. Henderson Jr. became friends with Ellington’s son, Mercer, who also went on to Julliard.
In adulthood, Henderson Jr. would work closely with Ellington on projects, and Ellington often referred to Henderson Jr. as his “classical arm.” Among those projects were arrangements of Ellington’s compositions—scores that Henderson III kept and donated to Eastman last fall.
The collection, housed in the Ensemble Library, includes 11 songs from the 2000 album Classic Ellington. The songs were composed by Ellington and arranged and orchestrated by Henderson Jr. to commemorate Ellington’s 100th birthday in 1999. They include “That Do-Wah Thing,” “Solitude in Transblucency,” “Sophisticated Lady,” and “Isfahan.”
Henderson III also donated his father’s National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award, bestowed shortly before the elder Henderson’s death, to Eastman.
Eastman’s Ensemble Library collection includes more than 20,000 items in fields such as orchestra, band, choral, and jazz. But the Henderson collection is different and special, says Department of Jazz Studies and Contemporary Media chair Jeff Campbell.
“There’s just not generally a lot of orchestra music produced in a jazz setting,” he says. “The fact that it’s produced by the father of an esteemed alumnus—and it’s Duke Ellington music arranged for an orchestra—makes it extra special. Students will be able to study the details of this great work and have access to it. It’s a significant donation.”
This story appears in the fall 2024 issue of Rochester Review, the magazine of the University of Rochester.
