In this virtual conference, senior scholars and graduate students present research on Such Sweet Thunder and related topics. Participants include NEA Jazz Master Delfeayo Marsalis, David Hajdu, professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn, Patricia Akhimie, Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark and author of Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World (Routledge 2018), David Berger, composer, arranger, conductor, and Ellington authority, and Jack Chambers, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto and author of Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis and Sweet Thunder: Duke Ellington’s Music in Nine Themes.