A Legacy at Duke
Years ago, when he first came to Duke in the early 2000s, Kelley fastened an image of jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams outside his office door in the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building.
Williams, considered a prodigy as a young child, arranged for musicians such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong and performed with Dizzy Gillespie. Tours included New York City, where she played for Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton.
Williams taught at Duke as an Artist-in-Residence from 1977 until her death in 1981 in Durham. In 1983, the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture at Duke was named after her. Kelley — who never met Williams studied at Duke as an undergraduate under professors who had been her colleagues.
“I thought highly of her because of all the great stories passed along about her and the music itself, which I found my way back to after I graduated from Duke,” said Kelley, who selected Williams’ “Anima Christi” for the playlist. She combined jazz and sacred music. In 1975, she performed the first-ever jazz mass for thousands in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
“Anima Christi has elements of Blues that are pretty prominent, and she expanded within her choice of musical expression,” Kelley said. “I thought that her ability to reference 12-Bar Blues and do it in the context of a sacred work was incredible.”
