Mingus Big Band
"Live in Tokyo at the Blue Note"
Sunnyside-
SSC3042(
2006)
file under: Mainstream/Bebop, Post Bop
Eddie Henderson - trumpet
Jack Walrath - trumpet
Alex Sipiagin - trumpet
Abraham Burton - alto saxophone
Craig Handy - alto saxophone, flute
Wayne Escoffery - tenor saxophone
Seamus Blake - tenor saxophone
Ronnie Cuber - baritone sax
Frank Lacy - trombone, vocal ku-umba
Conrad Herwig - trombone
Earl McIntyre - bass trombone, tuba
Dave Kikoski - piano
Kenny Davis - bass
Johnathan Blake - drums
Thirty years ago, in late December, 1976, Charles Mingus performed a series of concerts in Tokyo with his quintet. In 2005, also in December, another Mingus band rounded out a week at Tokyo’s famous Blue Note Club with a live recording on New Year’s Eve. Trumpet player Jack Walrath was on hand for both events, linking past and present. The original tour included Walrath, Charles Mingus, Dannie Richmond, Danny Mixon and Ricky Ford. The current 14-piece ensemble, the Mingus Big Band, is the legacy group that carries Mingus’s voice into the future. For the past fifteen years it has kept Mingus’s music passionately alive in a weekly residency in Manhattan and in clubs and concert halls across the world.
Back in the Seventies, Charles Mingus was playing the compositions he had just written: “Sue’s Changes,” “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love,” “Remember Rockefeller at Attica,” “Noddin’ Ya Head Blues.” The Mingus Big Band went further back, to the Fifties, for four
Mingus compositions arranged by current band members.
Kiichi Goto a music professor, a synthesizer expert who lived under the tutelage of Moog, a man of boundless generosity, was the artist who oversaw two nights of recording, insisting on bringing his own state-of-the-art equipment. Engineer Tom Swift took over in New York, mixed and mastered the material as he has done on the band’s last six recordings. “I want
it to project the vitality of that evening,” he said. “I want it to feel like you’re there at a table — like you have to pay the two-drink minimum!”
Charles Mingus passed on in 1979. His enormous legacy of composition, with its shouts and clamors, its melodies and yearnings, continues to walk the earth through the vitality of these musicians and their uniquely personal translations of his music. - from Sunnyside Records homepage
Nearly 15 years after its formation, the Mingus Big Band set up its microphones at Tokyo's Blue Note Club on New Year's Eve 2005-2006 and did what it's been doing so admirably all along: paying homage to its inspiration in a way that would have made him proud. Fourteen members strong, the ensemble for the event, most of them fairly recent additions, included a veteran of Charles Mingus' own Tokyo concerts of 1976, trumpeter Jack Walrath. For the occasion, the band looked back even further though, to the '50s, rolling out and updating the arrangements of a handful of numbers Mingus wrote in his early years: "Bird Calls," the fiery opener "Wham Bam," "Celia" spotlighting alto saxman Craig Handy, and "Prayer for Passive Resistance," which producer Sue Mingus (Charles' widow), notes was arranged by tenor saxist John Stubblefield shortly before his death in 2005. With three trumpets, five saxmen (including tenor, alto, and baritone), and three trombones, the program is naturally heavy on brass-fueled arrangements, with plenty of room given over for solo blowing. "Bird Calls," the tribute to Charlie Parker, features rousing turns from baritonist Ronnie Cuber, tenor Seamus Blake, and altos Craig Handy and Abraham Burton, while the easy-swinging "Free Cell Block F" opens up space for trombonists Conrad Herwig and Ku umba Frank Lacy, Handy moving over to flute, and Cuber returning on baritone. The live set (officially titled "Live in Tokyo at the Blue Note, 2005") avoids Mingus' more difficult material in favor of accessibility, but it's consistent with the other fine work this "ghost" band has done since its inception. - Jeff Tamarkin, All Music
”Wham, Bam,” indeed! Compared to the best performances by the late Charles Mingus, this effort has the air of more orthodox big bands like the ones led by Clarke/Boland and Jones/Lewis, which is also to say the best. McCoy Tyner's band on a good night has included some of the same performers featured on this live release, and Dave Kikoski is a somewhat Tynerish pianist, but for all that, the Mingus truth burns through. - Robert R. Calder, All About Jazz
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Charles Mingus - At UCLA 1965
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1CD-
$15.00
Track
Listing
(click linked titles for mp3)
1.
Wham Bam
[6:39]
2.
Opus Four
[9:21]
3.
Celia
[7:01]
4.
Bird Calls
[6:42]
5.
Meditations
[10:27]
6.
Prayer For Passive Resistance
[6:10]
7.
Free Cell Block F
[7:15]
8.
Ecclusiastics
[10:03]
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