A short post is often a good post. Here’s some rather extraordinary footage of Charles Mingus playing with his daughter and being interviewed in the 1960s. The next day he was evicted by the police from his apartment:
The film is Thomas Reichmann’s Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968.
Every Time I Think of You
Alan Broadbent and Strings
Alan Broadbent – Autumn Variations
Alan Broadbent – Every Time I Think of You
From Every Time I Think of You: Artistry Music [Buy]
There are probably two jazz pianists born in New Zealand who can be said to have ‘made it’ on the world stage – Mike Nock and Alan Broadbent. Which for a country with the population the same size as greater Birmingham (UK), is not a bad record…
A third contender might be Mark de Clive-Lowe, who is carving a fine reputation in the future jazz/dance sphere, and has all the potential to be a major force in the music. And while all three make regular trips back home to work with their old kiwi collaborators, New Zealand is not a practical permanent base for an international career in music: Nock lives in Sydney, de Clive-Lowe in London, and Broadbent in Los Angeles.
Alan Broadbent’s new album Every Time I Think of You is a fine summary of his particular journey so far through the jazz world: well-proportioned and well-behaved, and in some ways, very, very deep. Like the Carol Robbins record mentioned here a couple of months back, it’s a mostly quiet album that reveals itself over time.
In my experience, the format of jazz group plus string ensemble can lend itself to insipid muzak, yet this sub-genre has produced a few genuine classics – Charlie Parker with Strings and Stan Getz with the Eddie Sauter Orchestra immediately spring to mind. Every Time I Think of You deserves to be considered alongside them: there is real emotion here, and the Tokyo Strings along with Broadbent (p) Brian Bromberg (b) and Kendall Kay (d) give Broadbent’s arrangements direction and substance.
Broadbent, a little like Fred Hersch perhaps, is an unashamed romantic of the old school – both in terms of choice of songbook material, and from what he takes from the classical/symphonic world. In a newspaper interview in New Zealand I read, he mentioned Mahler as an influence on his arrangements, and on this album’s rendition of the Davis/Evans Blue in Green, he gives some unmistakably Tschaikovskian counter-phrasing to the strings.
It is fair to say that Broadbent is probably best recognised as an arranger rather than a pianist. He has won two Grammys for the orchestral settings on albums by Natalie Cole and Charlie Haden’s Quartet West, and cut his teeth working for Woody Herman and Nelson Riddle. But Broadbent is a focused and imaginative instrumentalist in his own right – check out Autumn Variations.
Easy listening? Quite possibly. But if musicians like Alan Broadbent are tracing the middle of the road in jazz these days, then we are assured of a journey that lacks nothing in intelligence and good taste.
Read another review of Every Time I Think of You on blogcritic.org
In other Blogs…
For you Mingus completists, Kellen Yamanaka at Song with Orange has a review of the recently re-released recording of the 1965 Mingus band at UCLA.
So online shopping has opened up a whole new world of music consumption for us kiwis! We can now buy from shops all over the world, while avoiding the need to spend $2000 on an airfare. Last week my latest CD order arrived from Amazon, and I realised that the every single disc I bought was the result of discovering it through audioblogs, or through my own blogging activities. Here’s my shopping list, and the reason why I bought the album:
I would not have found any of this music without the aid of the Internet – it is not played on the radio, it is not advertised in magazines. Some of the recordings are 40 years old. Audioblogs seem to provide a great opportunity to breed a more informed and more sophisticated community of music consumers. I can only thing that this must be good for music as an industry in the long term, and more importantly, this must be good for music and musicians.
Mark Hollis- The Gift
From Mark Hollis: Polydor 537 688-2 [Buy]
Rambunctious and confident, E.S.P. was recorded at the 1972 Philharmonic Hall concert. We hear solos from Lee Konitz (as), Lonnie Hillyer (tp), Gerry Mulligan (bs) and Charles McPherson (as). The back-announcement is by Bill Cosby, who was M.C. for the evening.
I like to think that Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon is Mingus’ acerbic response to the bouncy optimism of Bart Howard’s Fly Me to the Moon. Solos are by Richard Williams (tp), Jaki Byard (pn), Zoot Sims (ts) and Charlie Mariano (as). The tune was the final “planned” tune recorded at the 1962 Town Hall concert, and ends suddenly during Mariano’s solo as Mingus was given a signal to wrap the gig up before union overtime kicked in at midnight…
Charles Mingus Orchestra – E.S.P.
From Charles Mingus and Friends in Concert : Columbia C2K 64975 [Buy]
Charles Mingus Orchestra – Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon
From The Complete Town Hall Concert : Blue Note 28353 2 5 [Buy]
In fact some of the highlights of these concerts came not from the planned and arranged tunes, but from spontaneous music that was created in some ways to cover up for the often abysmal playing and sightreading!
The October 1962 New York “Town Hall Concert” was the first attempt by Mingus to record his Epitaph suite, and became one of the most famously bungled gigs in the history of jazz. The entire, almost unbelievable saga is recounted by Gene Santoro in the Village Voice (thanks to be.jazz for posting this recently!). As midnight approached and the concert slowly dissolved into chaos, trumpeter Clark Terry started the opening riff from Ellington’s “In a Mellow Tone“. The band quickly caught on, and the performance is exciting because it is completely unrehearsed, and born out of total frustration. We hear solos by Pepper Adams (bs), Clark Terry (tp) and Britt Woodman (tb).
Mingus’ New York “comeback” concert in February 1972 was perhaps less eventful, but again the juggernaut barely kept itself on the rails. At the end of a less-than-satisfactory first half, Mingus tried to reignite the evening by launching into a funky, dirty blues. Gene Ammons (ts) followed his lead, and the resulting jam (named “Mingus Blues“) is one of my favourite Mingus recordings.
Charles Mingus Orchestra – In a Mellow Tone
From The Complete Town Hall Concert: Blue Note 28353 2 5 [Buy]
Charles Mingus Orchestra – Mingus Blues
From Charles Mingus and Friends in Concert: Columbia C2K 64975 [Buy]
When I first heard Mingus’ Self Portrait/Chill of Death, (part of the Epitaph suite), I immediately thought of Charles Ives. And not because both composers share a first name!
Chill of Death features an almost endless string of interlocking solos – during the 11 minute duration of the piece, just about every orchestra member gets to solo, sometimes playing over the top of each other in “clashing” chord progressions. The overall effect reminded me of Charles Ives symphonic compositions, in which different sections of the orchestra would often be given different tunes to play – simultaneously!
In the climax of “The Fourth of July” (1911-13), Ives splits the orchestra into four in an orgy of patriotic chaos- the brass scream out Columbia, Gem of the Ocean, a solo cornet tries to burst through with Battle Hymn of the Republic, while piano and xylophone are hammering away at Yankee Doodle. And the rest of the orchestra? Well, by this stage who cares what they are are doing…
So, here is Chill of Death and The Fourth of July placed alongside each other, for comparison and contrast. For optimum effect, play both mp3s at once…
Epitaph Orchestra – Self Portrait/Chill of Death
From Charles Mingus Epitaph: Columbia 466631 [Buy]
Leonard Bernstein/New York Philharmonic Orchestra – The Fourth of July
From Leonard Bernstein – Ives Symphonies Nos. 2&3 etc: Sony Classical 516023 [Buy]
The next few posts will briefly explore Charles Mingus and his writing for large ensembles. An iconoclast in all things, Mingus often worked with (and wrote for) ensembles that were larger and more diverse than the standard acoustic jazz quartet/quintet format: great examples of this are the octet format heard on Mingus Ah Um and the 11-piece outfit that performed The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. And arrangements of Mingus for big band are performed and recorded today by the very illustrious Mingus Big Band.
But Charles Mingus had compositional concepts that extended beyond even mid-sized and standard big-band formats, with pieces that were written and arranged for large bands of 20 to 30 musicians, often including instruments that still remain exotic in the jazz context – bassoon, french horn, timpani.
So to kick off, here are two of my favourites from Mingus’ sprawling Epitaph suite for 30 piece orchestra, assembled and performed for the first time in 1989, a decade after the composer’s death. Moods in Mambo is entirely through-composed, without solos, and features a largely atonal composition overlaid on a mambo percussion section – sort of Schoenberg meets Eddie Palmieri. Wolverine Blues is a swaggering orchestral arrangement of Jelly Roll Morton’s tune, and the undoubted highlight is Michael Rabinowitz blues solo on… bassoon ! Not to be missed.
Epitaph Orchestra – Moods in Mambo
Epitaph Orchestra – Wolverine Blues
From Charles Mingus Epitaph: Columbia 466631 [Buy]
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