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Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899-1974) was one of America's most influential composers, pianists, and jazz bandleaders in a career that spanned more than fifty years. Ellington was prolific during his time as an itinerant bandleader and shaped many musicians, critics, and music lovers who saw him in action. However, little study has been devoted to his technique. In Ellington the Composer: Caught in the Act, author Jack Chambers gives readers a thorough overview of Ellington's processes and practices. Ellington's methods were fluid, deeply unique, and democratic, and this increased the mystery in his techniques.

Ellington himself was reluctant to discuss his process and was often ironic and self-deprecating about his work. The centerpiece of the book, a chapter called, "Earwitnesses and Eyewitnesses," gathers together commentary from Ellington himself and more than fifty collaborators in an oral history of those methods.

Among the interviews in Ellington the Composer, Chambers explores how Ellington often revisited musical sketches from his "stockpile" and fitted them for special musical settings. Chambers also makes his selections of Ellington's twenty best big band compositions, an attempt at discerning the canon from more than a thousand pieces written for and performed by the jazz orchestra, the heartbeat of the composer's muse from beginning to end.