In the fall of 1966, jazz legend Duke Ellington found himself in the quaint town of Albion, Michigan. In his renaissance, Ellington was exploring the cross-section between jazz Christian liturgy in a series of performances known as “The Sacred Concerts.”

Prior to Ellington’s arrival in Albion, he performed Sacred Concerts at churches in New York, San Francisco, and England. This was the first–and only Sacred Concert performance on a college campus, and Ellington didn’t do it alone; all 85 members of the Albion College Student Choir were invited to perform alongside him.

“I mean, that was a really big deal to me. That, hey, these guys are treating us like equals here. They need us for the performance,” said Bruce Tobin ’70, a member of the choir at the time of Ellington’s visit. “They’re not looking down on us, and they’re thanking us for helping them. That was a big deal as an 18-year-old.”

“The significance of that performance, now that I think about it, was typical of what Albion did for its students,” Dennis Moore ’70 added. “It said, ‘Get outside your comfort zone, and do something better than you think you can do.’”

That’s exactly what sophomore Kaen Patton ’27 decided to do this past summer. For Patton, taking on a Foundation for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (FURSCA) project doubled as a chance to document the history of Albion College itself–starting with Ellington’s historic, trailblazing visit to campus.

Examining Albion College’s distinguished past

The idea for the project started when Choir Director Clayton Parr ’80 found a binder belonging to former Choir Director David Strickler. In it, he discovered a collection of old concert programs, including the one from when Ellington came to campus–complete with his signature scrawled across the front.

“It’s been a FURSCA project in search of a student to do it for a number of years,” Parr said. “I could’ve written something about Ellington and done the research, but that’s not the point, right? The point is to get students involved and for them to know that Albion College has a distinguished past.”

Ultimately, it was Patton, a music major with a minor in fine arts from Fenton, who stepped up to complete the project. Once Patton started her research, it didn’t take long for her to see what Parr was talking about.

“We have so many famous–and even some infamous–people who have come here to speak or perform or just share their knowledge with the campus, and students don’t always know that,” Patton said. “[President Barack] Obama spoke here. There have been a ton of performances here, too. Three Doors Down is a huge one. It’s just interesting, these pieces of Albion’s history that aren’t really talked about.”

That was truly the mission of Patton’s project: To talk, and to record the stories of alumni who participated in a way that hadn’t been done before. She started by collecting the names of alumni who were present for or participated in the performance. From there, she reached out to those alumni to hear their stories.

“Getting the inside scoop and hearing this all firsthand from actual people who performed with him on stage and got to talk to him was so cool,” Patton said. “I felt a little starstruck for a minute.”

She wasn’t alone in that feeling. Robert Moore ’68 told Patton, “There was an atmosphere that there were celebrities here. They were bringing us something to open our horizons, to open our eyes to something new, musically and culturally.”

Dianne Murray-Pratt ’68, echoed a similar sentiment. “We were just absolutely amazed. I can’t speak for others, but this was the first time I had seen a big name entertainer live, and the level of professionalism I witnessed that night has carried through with me. I measure other performances by that standard. I thought it was very significant.”

The significance of the performance was underscored by all of the alumni who spoke with Patton. Despite Ellington’s visit being inarguably notable, Patton says it wasn’t unique for the college.

“Albion’s vision for its students has always been to get those hands-on experiences,” Patton said. “That’s what Dave Strickler was trying to do too. His entire goal for the choir was to bring in different performers and different artists to campus so that students could experience new types of music and learn about other cultures. He wanted students to have a wider range of knowledge about music and experience with it during their time at Albion College.”

Experiential learning was the cornerstone of Ellington’s visit to campus; Strickler’s commitment to exposing students to different types of music developed them as musicians, as students, and–ultimately–as people. Exposing the choir and the Albion community to one of the greatest composers of his time was just one example.

Revisiting Albion College’s history, Patton said, can help us see what it has always done well. It can reignite students’ passions when they see what’s possible here, and it can remind alumni that their alma mater will always hold onto the memories they left behind.

“I think it’s important to remember everything that Albion has done for us,” Patton said. “The memories and pieces of our history that made Albion so great in the past, holding onto that can help bring up the morale of the students. It tugs at the heartstrings a bit.”

“There’s a story of musical history to be told, and there’s a part of Albion’s history to be chronicled,” Parr added. “This is a spotlight on a significant part of Albion’s past as we turn an eye toward the future.”

Future implications

Since stepping on campus last summer, President Wayne Webster has made it clear that the accessibility and expansion of experiential learning at Albion College will be a priority for the institution during his tenure. Ellington’s performance alongside the Albion College Choir nearly 60 years ago is proof that experiential learning has long been a hallmark of the Albion College experience.

Strickler’s legacy in the music department is a microcosm of what exists on a larger scale throughout the college, and Ellington’s visit speaks to that. Choir members who sang alongside Ellington and performance attendees alike continue to be impacted by that experience to this day. And, Parr said, there are even implications for current students.

“Strickler’s passion was recognized and supported by alumni, and we now have the Strickler Concert Series. We have an endowed concert series, and the person who gets to decide how that endowment is spent is the choir director, so that’s really kind of nice,” Parr said with a smile.

Since taking over as choir director in 2012, the endowment has allowed Parr to expose choir students to a diverse range of music. Most recently, a folk group from the Republic of Georgia came to campus this past September.

“It’s easy for students to just deal with the circumstances that are around them while they’re here and not really think about how this place got to where it is,” Parr said. “But we want them to think about that, because then when they’re alumni, they’ll think about what this place can become.”

We cannot move forward without revisiting where we’ve been, Parr and Patton agreed, and that is how we honor the legacies of people like Ellington and Strickler.

Patton said that she is thinking about how she can take what she learned from this project and pay it forward for the greater good of Albion. She plans to present the full story of the Ellington visit at the annual Elkin R. Isaac Student Research Symposium in April 2025, but she doesn’t necessarily see that as the end of the road.

“I want to do more research. Parr and I haven’t talked much more about if we’ll be doing projects similar to this in the future, but I think all of the artists that Dave Strickler brought to campus deserve to be recognized,” Patton said. “I think this might be a good launching point to get started on that.”