Walk with the spirits, talk with the spirits. We all still need to. That's given our ghostly love affair with jazz. All its myths, rituals, outsize personalities and all the legends light us up inside. What the greatest composers in the pantheon - to us Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus - gifted our internal spiritual lives is incalculable and enduring.
And what a vision this second helping is two years on from the first volume of the centennial celebrations - and every bit as good - that honoured Mingus' 100th back in '22 when the world was still reeling from the aftershocks of the pandemic.
The arrangement of 'She's Just Miss Popular Hybrid' by Boris Kozlov, who plays Mingus' 1927 Ernst Heinrich Roth double bass on the album, provides a whole new window of light into this beautiful ballad - the melody taken on by trumpet after a hint of flute and enveloped by the sheer warmth and many layers of the overall big band sound that wraps it all up in rhythm and humane rootedness.
Bountiful blend
Recorded at Sound on Sound Studios in Montclair, New Jersey, the much loved ghost band led by saxist Alex Foster and double bassist Boris Kozlov, Charles' son Eric adds vocals and narrations on 'The Clown' and the blend of the 34 musicians is as delicious as ever. Mingus Dynasty Band bassist Mike Richmond crops up on two tracks 'GG Train' and 'Farewell Farwell'. We loved him on Andy Laverne's Spot On issued earlier this year.
We thrilled to the Centennial Sessions Vol. 2 version of 'She's Just Miss Popular Hybrid' most. And for an extra deep dive immediately went back to the Mingus Plays Piano (Impulse, 1964) version for another angle and a glimpse into the stripped down essence of the piece before returning once again to the new recording. What a touch on piano Mingus also had and what a lot of range of emotions the trajectory of the piece draws out in both versions.
Freewheeling spirit - file under ''J'' for ''Jazz Joy''
Raucous, bohemian, full of life and so instilled with what the French call tendresse (just about everything sounds better in French). And so many memories of a few fleeting but cherished visits to New York flicker into view in the mind's eye given how this music speaks of place as well as people - we can't think of another big band that sounds so much in the American jazz tradition and is still so relevant for anyone who loves today's jazz at the same time. Bravo. Certainly it's a new addition to our albums of the year reckoning, two-thirds of the way through.
Comments