The Novel Jazz Septet will be swinging over for a musical matinee by two of the most influential and acclaimed icons of jazz, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 13 November, at the Saco River Theatre in Buxton. The matinee format is perfect for jazz lovers who don’t like a long drive home in the dark after a concert.

This will be the band’s final Ellington- and Strayhorn-featured performance of their 2022 season. After this performance, Novel Jazz begins assembling new Ellington and Strayhorn arrangements for the 2023 season.

Novel Jazz has been a fixture in the Maine jazz scene for almost two decades. Their mission is to share the music and stories of these two giants of jazz who wrote some 2,500 compositions over their musical careers, two percent of which represents the well-known standards and 98% of which represents rarely heard gems. They’ll perform standard tunes from the Ellington/Strayhorn repertoire plus newly arranged compositions that they have unearthed from the Ellington Archives of the Smithsonian Museum of American History as well as the Strayhorn Collection at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Novel Jazz members have dusted these pieces off, rearranged them for the septet, and given them a 21st century sound, all of their own.

General admission tickets to the performance are $15. For more information, call the Saco River box office at 207-929-6473, email them at info@sacorivertheatre.org or  visit sacorivertheatre.org/events. To find out more about Novel Jazz, visit mainejazz.net. The Saco River Theatre is located at 29 Salmon Falls Rd., Buxton.

As part of the upcoming London Jazz Festival, the BBC Concert Orchestra celebrates Billy Strayhorn as he gets his due as Duke Ellington’s main man.

At the Pizza Express Live in Holborn on November 19 there is an exploration of the careers of Duke Ellington and his lyricist, pianist and fellow composer, gay and civil rights campaigner, Billy Strayhorn (Take the A Train, Lush Life, Blood Count) by Ian Shaw and saxophonist Tony Kofi, a perfect pairing.