The culmination of a decade-long study, Duke Ellington’s Symphonic Visions by Luca Bragalini has arrived as the first book entirely dedicated to the legendary composer’s works for the symphony orchestra. Released on December 15, 2025, as part of the acclaimed American Made Music series, this meticulous work unfolds across seven chapters that deep-dive into Ellington’s most complex orchestral scores. From unraveling the cultural challenges behind recording “La Scala, She Too Pretty to Be Blue” to the remarkable discovery of the unpublished score Celebration, Bragalini utilizes personal interviews and immersive archival research to shed light on a previously obscure aspect of Ellington’s oeuvre. The book even examines a poignant posthumous symphonic ballet sketched by Ellington on his deathbed, providing a rare look into the final creative thoughts of an American icon.
Published in English through a collaboration with the International Center for American Music, the book transcends narrow musicology by integrating art history, sociology, and urban history to explore Ellington’s political ideologies and his connection to the Harlem Renaissance. The narrative is brought to life with unpublished photographs from a prominent postwar Italian photojournalist who captured Ellington’s collaboration with the Orchestra Sinfonica della Scala in Milan. By tracing a journey that spans Harlem, Europe, and Canada, Bragalini verifies Ellington’s status not just as a jazz pioneer, but as a symphonic visionary whose work intersected deeply with religion and African American community identity. It is an engaging, interdisciplinary read that finally decodes the enigmatic persona of Ellington within the world of classical instrumentation.