John Howland is Professor of Music History at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim and formerly an associate professor of musicology, jazz studies, and American Studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He is the co-founder and former editor of the journal Jazz Perspectives, as well as the author of 'Ellington Uptown': Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and the Birth of Concert Jazz (2009).

'Few publications among the literature on Duke Ellington to have appeared in recent years … can claim to have shed as much light on their subject as the impressive collection of essays assembled by John Howland for his new symposium, Duke Ellington Studies.' Mervyn Cooke, Music and Letters

• 1. Ellington the entertainer: pageantry and prophecy in Duke Ellington's films Phil Ford; 2. Marketing to the middlebrow: reconsidering Ellingtonia, the legacy of early Ellington criticism, and the idea of a 'serious' jazz composer John Howland; 3. 'Art or debauchery?': the reception of Ellington in the UK Catherine Tackley; 4. 'Nobody was looking': the unparalleled jazz piano legacy of Duke Ellington Bill Dobbins; 5. 'People wrap their lunches in them': Duke Ellington and his written music manuscripts Walter van de Leur; 6. The moor's revenge: the politics of Such Sweet Thunder David Schiff; 7. Duke Ellington in the LP era Gabriel Solis; 8. Authentic synthetic hybrid: Ellington's concepts of Africa and its music Carl Woideck; 9. 'The mother of all albums': revisiting Ellington's A Drum is a Woman John Wriggle.