4/4. Russell Davies pays tribute to classically trained jazz pianist, composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn , who died in 1967, aged 51, following a striking career marked by his longtime collaboration with jazz giant Duke Ellington. In 1938 Strayhorn offered his now-signature compostion Lush Life - about a broken-hearted man's disillusionment with the boozy pickup world of jazz clubs - to Ellington, who later described him as "my listener, my most dependable appraiser [and] critic".