Mr Sun Plays Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite In March of 2023, Darol Anger, Joe K. Walsh, Grant Gordy, and Aidan O’Donnell went into the recording studio to transmogrify the legendary Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker Suite into the Acoustic String Band, as Mr Sun. Their studio of choice, in North Adams, Massachusetts, was a state-of-the art recording facility built by the Mass/MOCA Art Museum. The recording engineer was the equally legendary David Sinko, who has recorded many of the most important and innovative acoustic string bands of the last 40 years. Tchaikovsky’s extraordinary Nutcracker Suite contains some of the most beloved and familiar melodies in the Western world. Mr Sun has seized upon the inspiration of Duke Ellington’s brilliant, sly, & urbane re-interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Suite as an opportunity to salute and re-invent this wildly multi-faceted work anew, through the lens of the American String Band, a musical format which now encompasses many styles and is presently engaged in a marathon upheaval of innovation and expansion. On Mr Sun's new recording, the pieces of the Suite range from close interpretations of Billy Strayhorn’s original charts to intense extrapolations based on the spirit of the material. Mr Sun premiered the work at the Freshgrass Festival at Mass/MOCA in September of 2023, concurrent with the release of the recording. The Project has been generously underwritten by the Freshgrass Foundation.