Suite from “The River”

• The River is a ballet for jazz orchestra (or symphony orchestra) that premiered in New York in 1970.¹
• Alvin Ailey commissioned this ballet for the American Ballet Theatre in 1970.²
• Ron Collier orchestrated this work. He collaborated with Ellington on several projects.³

“[The River] was to be all water music, and it was to follow the course of this stream through various stages: through a meander, a falls, a whirlpool, and then gurgling rapids. I fell in love with the idea…Once he decided that he was going to write this river piece as a ballet, he had all the world’s water music on recordings. He had the scores and everything. He had Handel’s Water Music; he had Debussy’s La Mer; he had Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. He said, ‘I’ve been listening to this to see what other people have done with water music’.”

Alvin Ailey on Duke Ellington’s The River⁸ 

1. Marcello Piras, “Ellington, Duke,” Grove Music Online (October 16, 2013), accessed January 26, 2022,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.org/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002249397.
2. John Henken, “The River Suite: Orch. Collier,” LA Philharmonic, accessed January 26, 2022, https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/3822/the-river-suite.
3. Ibid.