You probably never asked yourself what Aaron Copland, Walter Damrosch, and Bugs Bunny had in common. If you had, you'd know the answer is that they all were admirers of Duke Ellington, one of those rare artists whose genius was recognized during his lifetime both by his fellow musicians and the public at large.

Duke Ellington in 1961. From the Frank Driggs Collection

On the occasion of the Carnegie Hall premiere of his suite Black, Brown, and Beige in 1943, for example, Ellington was presented with a plaque signed by a group of distinguished admirers including Copland, Damrosch, Leopold Stokowski, Fritz Reiner, Eugene Ormandy, and William Grant Still. And classic cartoon aficionados will recall an uncharacteristically pretentious Bugs indulging in some name-dropping by citing his friend "Sir Duke of Ellington" in the episode "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."

Listeners will find ample reasons for "Sir Duke's" enduring popularity when the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra kicks off its second season with an all-Ellington concert on October 2 at 8 p.m. in the Juilliard Theater. The concert will be conducted by Victor Goines, the director of Juilliard's Institute for Jazz Studies, and Wycliffe Gordon, a member of the Institute's trombone faculty, and will feature selections from several multi-movement suites written by Ellington during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A prolific and imaginative composer, bandleader, and pianist, "Duke" (born Edward Kennedy) Ellington (1899-1974) stands as one of most influential figures in the history of American music. His compositional output—still in the process of being comprehensively catalogued—is estimated at around 2,000 works and includes jazz standards such as "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)," "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," "Prelude to a Kiss," and "Satin Doll"; short instrumental pieces like Cotton Tail, Concerto for Cootie, Ko-Ko, and The Mooche; large-scale suites such as the monumental Black, Brown, and Beige, described by Ellington as a "tone parallel" intended to portray the history of blacks in America through their music; film scores (Asphalt Jungle, Anatomy of a Murder); arrangements of classical works (Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite); and liturgical music, the main focus of his last decade.

JUILLIARD JAZZ ORCHESTRA Wednesday, Oct. 2, Juilliard Theater, 8 p.m. For time and ticket information see calendar.

One of the hallmarks of Ellington's style was his innovative approach to orchestration. Ellington's experience leading his own orchestra for more than 30 years was integral to his development as a composer, as his writing was inspired in large part by the individual styles and talents of his band members. He also had a broad knowledge of classical music and cited masterful orchestrators such as Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky among his influences. Vocal in his dislike of categories, musical and otherwise, Ellington felt that his widespread designation as a"

A Ellington's influence on subsequent generations of musicians, biographer John Edward Hasse notes in his book Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington that, although Ellington's art was too personal for him to have founded a particular school or engendered "single-minded imitators," he "nonetheless influenced a range of pianists, composers, and orchestrators. His influence is everywhere: for example, in the elegance that other orchestras strove to emulate; in the miniature tone poems and the range of expression that some other bands sometimes offered; in the vocalizing of instruments and the instrumentalizing of vocals; in the compositions of Charles Mingus and Wynton Marsalis, to name just two; and in the greater respect that African-American and jazz musicians are now accorded."

As another vivid indication of Ellington's enduring popularity, ensembles such as the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, led by Juilliard alumnus and trustee Wynton Marsalis (and many of whose members serve on the faculty of Juilliard's Jazz Studies program), are thriving and introducing new audiences to the music of Ellington and other big-band composers of the past and present. The Juilliard Jazz Orchestra itself includes roughly the same number and disposition of instruments as Ellington's orchestra in its maturity.

Duke Ellington. From the Frank Driggs Collection

The Juilliard Jazz Orchestra's program on October 2 will be comprised of selections from Ellington's Latin American Suite (1968), a work inspired by Ellington's tour of the region that year; New Orleans Suite (1970), a colorful work featuring five movements describing aspects of the city's geography and heritage (e.g., "Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies") and four movements serving as musical "portraits" of New Orleans figures including Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Wellman Braud, and Mahalia Jackson; Afro-Eurasian Eclipse Suite (1971), whose eight movements mainly emphasize rhythmic ideas; Toga Brava Suite (1971); and Uwis (University of Wisconsin) Suite (1972), written when Ellington received an honorary doctorate from that institution.

Loren Schoenberg, the renowned saxophonist, conductor, and jazz historian who serves on the faculty of the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies, comments that "Victor Goines has chosen a very interesting program of lesser known, later works that show that Ellington was growing as a composer until the day he died. The program is exciting and full of potential, and I will be very curious to hear the students' take on music that was first recorded around the time when their parents were in college. And they are not going to find a better coach than Victor in the specifics of the idiom."

Given the facts that improvisation was an important element in Ellington's writing and that so many of his works were recorded, one question of interpretation that has emerged in the decades since Ellington's passing is the extent to which present-day jazz orchestras should try to duplicate Ellington's music exactly as his own ensemble performed it. In 1991, for example, Gunther Schuller wrote of his approach as co-director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, "When Duke Ellington composed a piece in 1935 and recorded it, we will play that piece the way it was composed and recorded, just as we play a Brahms score exactly as Brahms wrote it. Improvisation is a key part of jazz, but Miles Davis improvising on Ellington would not be Ellington; it would be Miles Davis."

By contrast, Juilliard's Victor Goines endorses a more flexible viewpoint, arguing that the sound and personnel of Ellington's ensemble were too singular to warrant attempts at recreating Ellington's music exactly as a historical reproduction. Mr. Goines advocates an approach that acknowledges tradition but allows the musicians to incorporate their own personalities into their performance. In order to develop in its students an awareness of jazz history as a critical precondition for informed performance, Mr. Goines notes, Juilliard's Jazz Studies program makes a conscious effort to coordinate the content of the program's required jazz history courses with the programming of the Jazz Orchestra's concerts throughout the year.

Mr. Goines' perspective is shared by Loren Schoenberg, who remarks that "Ellington was a great composer, and therefore it would be demeaning to say that only his original musicians were capable of playing his music. His music is for the ages, as are the creations of Shakespeare and Beckett; each generation has to interpret his work in its own way. Like all great art, it demands to be reinterpreted. The options range from note-to-note replication to radical reinterpretation—both extremes are valid, as is anything and everything in between: it all depends on how well it's done."

Anyone who attended one of the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra's exciting concerts last season will have no doubt that the group will do well by Ellington on October 2. Made possible in part by the generosity of Bank of America, the corporate sponsor of Juilliard's Jazz Studies program through 2002-03, the concert is free and open to the public, but guests should get their tickets early—many of last year's concerts sold out well ahead of the performances.