Mingus Epitaph – Clasijazz Orchestra

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Image courtesy of Mas I Mas Festival

The personality of Charles Mingus (1922-1979) as a creator is exciting, unique, referential for several generations of jazz players. Double bassist, pianist, composer and conductor, Mingus is a totem of jazz, with an extensive and varied work, and an almost transitional style, halfway between several schools: from swing to the avant-garde, through bop, Latin and, even classical, and with a strong admiration for the work of Duke Ellington. Biting, irascible, sarcastic, a fighter against racism, Charles Mingus passed down to posterity as an essential figure in the music and culture of the 20th century. He also left an unpublished work, Epitaph, discovered by Professor Andrew Homzy in 1989. The musicologist and conductor Gunther Schuller arranged and premiered it the same year in New York. In reality, Mingus himself had already submitted a sketch of the score in 1962. Epitaph is a monumental work; it's a compendium of the extraordinary, leafy personality of Charles Mingus.

Epitaph returns to Barcelona after more than thirty years, when on November 3, 1991, the Barcelona Jazz Festival presented this work at the Palau de la Música Catalana, with the direction of Gunther Schuller and the same orchestra that he had premiered it two years earlier at New York's Lincoln Center. This time, it comes from Clasijazz, one of the most fascinating initiatives of the jazz scene in Spain. Founded in Almeria in 1998, and with a huge activity since then, the Clasijazz association and its founder, Pablo Mazuecos, have launched projects of a very high level in recent years, collaborating with figures such as Maria Schneider and integrating musicians of various generations and origins.

The Clasijazz Orchestra is, like the work of Mingus, a cathedral formation, straddling classical and jazz, with thirty-three performers and under the direction of Ramon Cardo, saxophonist, big band player, traveling companion of Sambeat, Latino and other great exponents of the Valencian scene.

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