American Jazzscapes of the Middle East - Songs
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“Isfahan” is a beautiful slow jazz piece written by Billy Strayhorn (with co‑credit to Duke Ellington) and recorded on Ellington’s 1967 album The Far East Suite. It’s built as a lyrical ballad feature for alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, who plays the melody in a very singing, almost voice‑like way, with the band giving soft, cushion‑like harmonies underneath. Many jazz writers now call it one of the most beautiful ballads in jazz and one of the most famous movements from the whole suite. The relationship to the real city of Isfahan in Iran comes from Ellington and Strayhorn’s 1963 State Department tour, when the band actually visited Iran and its historic city of Isfahan. Ellington later described Isfahan as “a place where everything is poetry. They meet you at the airport with poetry and you go away with poetry,” and “Isfahan” in the suite is presented as a musical ode to that city. Strayhorn had already written the tune earlier under the title “Elf,” but after the tour they retitled it “Isfahan” to fit The Far East Suite and to connect it directly to their impressions of that Iranian city. So yes, the song’s name is very much about the actual city in Iran: it doesn’t copy Persian folk melodies, but it tries to capture how poetic, romantic, and graceful that place felt to Ellington and Strayhorn, using Hodges’s warm alto sound to “paint” Isfahan in music.

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