With Sony giving the RCA Victor catalogue the same treatment as the Columbia/Legacy series, there could hardly be a better place to start than the Far East Suite (or indeed Mingus’s Tijuana Moods, see below). It’s music that can be seen as capitalising on the modal and world-music trends of 1960s jazz, which Ellington had already done much to foreshadow, but it manages to balance this aspect with archetypical sounds from the band and its soloists. The vehicles for Gonsalves, Hodges, Hamilton (‘Ad Lib on Nippon’), Carney (‘Agra’), Brown (‘Amad’) and the pianist himself are among the best they were ever offered, and they respond in kind. (By the way, this is a straight reissue of the 2003 remastering with seven alternate takes, but without the additional essay by Stephanie Stein Crease.) You could say this reviewer is too close to the Far East Suite for objectivity – heard much of it in concert before it was even recorded, transcribed all of it, frequently played it live and facilitated other live performances – but all that convinces me the album is one of the jewels of Ellington’s late period.