Encores! to Bring Back Duke Ellington’s Cotton Club Parade at New York City Center in November

Encores! will offer audiences a second chance to see its 2011 production of Duke Ellington’s Cotton Club Parade. Directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle (Encores’ On the Town, Finian’s Rainbow) with music direction by Jazz at Lincoln Center Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis, the show will feature most of the 2011 cast as well as the Jazz at Lincoln Center All Stars under the direction of Daryl Waters. Cotton Club Parade will run at New York City Center for seven performances, November 14 through 18.

Cotton Club Parade is a celebration of Ellington’s years at the famed Harlem nightclub in the 1920s and ‘30s, when the joint was jumping with revues featuring big band swing and blues. As in the original shows, Cotton Club Parade will feature singers, dancers and variety acts, with songs by the greatest jazz composers of the time, including Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields (“I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “Digga Digga Doo”), a young Harold Arlen (“Stormy Weather,” “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,”), and of course, Duke Ellington (“Rockin’ in Rhythm,” “Cotton Club Stomp,” “Black and Tan Fantasy,” and “Creole Love Call”).

Duke Ellington’s Cotton Club Parade opened at City Center on November 18, 2011, for a limited, six-performance run. The 20th season of Encores! will also include Fiorello!, It’s A Bird…It’s a Plane..It’s Superman and On Your Toes, as well as a starry gala Encores! at 20 featuring Tony nominees Kelli O’Hara and Raul Esparza.