Amaranths are everlasting flowers, and A Symphony of Amaranths is dedicated to two immortals who produced the greatest orchestral jazz music - Duke Ellington and Gil Evans. The whole work is based on their initials - the notes DE and GE - and A Symphony of Amaranths is the second in a trilogy of works begun with The Greek Variations and followed by Kaleidoscope of Rainbows that all use a sequence of notes to provide the foundation for composition and improvisation. The album, recorded in 1971, was the first recording ever to receive an Arts Council award. Scored for a large jazz orchestra (effectively the New Jazz Orchestra, which Neil Ardley had directed in the 1960s) with added woodwind, harp and strings, A Symphony of Amaranths is the most romantic and harmonically dense piece of music that Neil Ardley ever composed.