The Satchmo’ Suite

Featuring a live three-piece band on stage, the play is a suite in twelve movements with words and music by Hans Böggild and Doug Innis. The story revolves around the relationship between a modern-day black classical cellist and the ‘Father of Jazz’ himself, Louis Armstrong. The cellist, on tour with a classical symphony, summons the ghost of Louis Armstrong as he struggles with a difficult musical passage from Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Cello. The lives of the two characters intermingle and resonate off each other, sparking a dialogue between the head and heart as issues of hope, courage, family and racism emerge in striking and powerful ways.