Mr Sun — from left, Grant Gordy, Darol Anger, Aidan O’Donnell and Joe K. Walsh — will perform the group’s interpretation of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Nutcracker Suite,” itself an interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s classical ballet suite, on Thursday, Dec. 11, at the Foundry Theater. (Submitted photo)
Duke Ellington’s ‘Nutcracker Suite,’ string-style, at the Foundry
- Published: December 11, 2025
The melodies of “The Nutcracker Suite” are ubiquitous this time of year: Undoubtedly, over the next few weeks, you’ll hear strains of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and “Waltz of the Flowers” piped through speakers in just about any public space you care to navigate.
The original 1892 ballet suite by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is a kind of soundtrack of the season — and next week, Yellow Springers will have the chance to hear that soundtrack in a new way.
String super-group Mr Sun will bring their reimagined version of the suite to the Foundry Theater on Thursday, Dec. 11: A string-band take on the suite based, in part, on Tchaikovsky’s original, but mostly on the 1960 big-band-inflected reworking by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn — a reinterpretation of a reinterpretation.
Mr Sun — fiddler and longtime string-band innovator Darol Anger, who visited the Foundry earlier this year with Bruce Molsky; mandolinist and vocalist Joe K. Walsh; guitarist and educator Grant Gordy; and Scottish bassist Aidan O’Donnell — has built its reputation on genre-blending acoustic Americana. Between them, the four have worked with everyone from David Grisman to the Gibson Brothers to modern jazz stalwarts, and have shown up at just about every major roots festival in the country.
In speaking with the News last month, guitarist Gordy said the group’s foray into bringing another dimension to Ellington and Strayhorn’s version of the suite began, as so many things do for touring acts, while shooting the breeze on the road.
“We were talking, and I think we all just agreed that the best music to put on around the holiday season is Ellington’s ‘Nutcracker,’ because it’s a record that we all, separately, revere and love,” Gordy said. “And like probably 99.9% of the population, these melodies are so much a part of life that it’s almost like they’re not even there — and yet, even though it was recorded in the ’60s, [the Ellington/Strayhorn recording] still sounds fresh and urbane, a really interesting take.”
As musicians who “absorb a lot of different influences,” Gordy said Mr Sun’s members are great lovers of “lots of different kinds of jazz.” And as the group traveled, someone “maybe made a joke” that the group should consider its own interpretation of the Ellington/Strayhorn record.
“Then suddenly it became, ‘Well, actually, maybe we could do that.’ Then we started to talk about it,” Gordy said.
Mr Sun applied for, and was awarded, a grant through the nonprofit Freshgrass Foundation to record a new take on the Ellington/Strayhorn suite. The group headed to Mass MoCA’s North Adams, Massachusetts, studio to write and record in March of 2023, and debuted the suite at the Freshgrass Festival that September. This year marks the third winter season that Mr Sun has toured their refreshed “Nutcracker Suite” for audiences.
Ellington and Strayhorn’s “Nutcracker Suite,” of course, swings hard in the Big Band style, replacing violins and harps with brass and woodwinds. In the same fashion, Mr Sun’s recorded suite translates the jazz version into the language of an acoustic string band, using fiddle, guitar, bass, mandolin and banjo to weave together classical ballet, mid-century jazz and modern Americana.
Gordy said that in working to reinterpret the suite, the band broke the Ellington/Strayhorn version into its extant pieces, with each band member taking a couple to work on. Because the band was already translating the pieces to work for a string band and the members’ own ears and voices, certain templates for reinvention were laid out for them.
“Already, there’s some stuff that’s going to happen,” Gordy said. “It’s going to be unique to this situation.”
In some cases, Mr Sun stayed fairly faithful in transliterating the Ellington/Strayhorn adaptation for strings on the recorded album; as the band wrote on their website: “Some crucial musical statements by giants such as Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonsalves were transcribed directly and played in their spirit.” Famed dobro and steel guitar player Jerry Douglas, who performed at the Foundry last year, appears on the album with his take on a trombone solo from Ellington/Stayhorn’s version of “Waltz of the Flowers.” Gordy said his arrangement of the “Arabian Dance” movement, which he cited as his “favorite movement from the original,” stays “closer to the Tchaikovsky” in presenting its “long, sinewy melody.”
In other places, Mr Sun left room for wide interpretation and improvisation — and a good deal of fun. Banjo player Alison Brown features on a version of the suite’s “Russian Dance” that, while it begins similarly to the Ellington/Strayhorn version, quickly takes a turn, shifting unexpectedly — and humorously — into bluegrass.
“And even when we boil it down to just touring as a four-piece, as opposed to playing with auxiliary musicians, we’ve figured out a way,” Gordy said. “So it’s a real balance, and then some of it is just wildly reimagined.”
What manifests on the band’s album is a clear admiration for the works that came before their interpretation, coupled with a big dose of Mr Sun’s hallmark vibe — which, true to their name, is sunny and light, with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
“We all really respect the craft and obviously hold Duke and Strayhorn and Tchaikovsky and John Coltrane and Bill Monroe — all these people — in high places of reverence,” Gordy said. “And we can’t really deny that we’re just kind of silly people, too.”
He added that fiddler Anger often describes the band’s approach this way: “We’re basically just trying to crack each other up.”
“There might even be an audible laugh somewhere on the record,” Gordy said.
Even before hitting “play” on the first track of “Mr Sun Plays Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite,” listeners can get a sense of the band’s crack-wise nature through the album’s track listing, which itself pays tribute to Ellington and Strayhorn’s sense of play. What was “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” for Tchaikovsky became “Sugar Rum Cherry” for Ellington and Strayhorn, and for Mr Sun, “Sugared Rum? Spare Me!” Another well-known tune, “Reed Flutes,” became “Toot Toot Tootie Toot” for Ellington and Strayhorn. For Mr Sun? It’s now “Reedy Rootin Tootin Pipey Gripey Waltz.”
On top of all of this, Mr Sun’s “Nutcracker Suite” diverges from Ellington and Strayhorn’s by adding one wholly original piece inspired by the ballet’s Act 1 snow scenes, filtering three musical themes through the “dawg music” style popularized by mandolinist David Grisman. Mr Sun calls the piece “Shovasky’s Transmogrifatron.”
Foundry Theater audiences can get an idea of what the upcoming Dec. 11 performance will sound like by listening to Mr Sun’s album — but, of course, a live performance will come with its own attendant particularities and surprises.
Gordy said the Nutcracker project is unusual for the band in that they still keep some music on stands — “We’re getting closer to being off-book,” he said — but the more familiar the material becomes, the more they can let it breathe.
“We know the music, and the mid-20th-century, swinging Big Band vibe, and everything that entails — dense harmony and wide, dynamic range — is something we love and respect so much,” Gordy said. “And yet we’re approaching this from the standpoint of being an American string band, which is not completely unrelated, but it’s another tradition.”
He added: “So what do you get when you mix all these things together? I don’t know — you get Mr Sun playing Duke Ellington’s ‘Nutcracker.’”
Mr Sun will perform at the Foundry Theater Thursday, Dec. 11, beginning at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $5 for students, and may be purchased online in advance at http://www.bit.ly/MrSunNutcrackerFoundry25.
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