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Charles Mingus 85th Birthday Celebration
Mingus Dynasty
(Mingus Dynasty Website)
with
Ku-umbra Frank Lacy, trombone
Boris Kozlov, bass
Alex Sipiagin, trumpet
Wayne Escoffrey, saxophone
Craig Handy, saxophone
Johnathan Blake, drums
David Kikoski, piano
At
Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola
(Dizzy’s Club Website)
Scott H. Thompson, Public Relations
Nikolas J. Lund
April 17, 2007
Tonight I caught the second set of the 7-piece Mingus Dynasty: the group self-identified as “the original Mingus Legacy band.” They were at Dizzy’s this week with the two other major Mingus groups (Mingus Big Band and the Charles Mingus Orchestra) in an ongoing series from Jazz at Lincoln Center which will all present the works of Charles Mingus through the end of the month.
First, there is the concept of the Mingus “legacy band”. It seems interesting and important. And, undoubtedly, it is appropriate that such a format exists, dedicated to the work of this one musician-composer, precisely because its presence on the stage today validates and affirms the actually exceptional strength of this artist as a composer of music. In the jazz world, the “composer” has appeared again and again as no more or less than the soloist working in extension, who can locate again and again the seeds for yet another “new tune” in the re-harmonization of some standard progression.
But, in the works of those composers who saw jazz forms beyond the mere ecstatic frameworks of instrumentalization, there emerge the curious shapes which really do call upon the strengths of the performer, or the interpreter—and maybe even the dramatist. The question ultimately leads, in the case of Mingus, to something I think which might even be initially addressable as a question of size, and the ways in which these Mingus compositions really do seem so much bigger than other tunes in the repertoire. But a characterization of Big Mingus would take big time. That is why we are fortunate to have at least three bands doing the most important characterizing for us.
In short, the concert itself was a thoroughly pleasant experience. Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, with a name which obviously hails from that more obtuse end of ongoing corporate venue-ing, is an elegant and undeniably comfortable space, surrounding its ample floor with walls of undulating maple and inoffensive modern-chic. Here tourists and locals alike can all feel protected by the excellent climate-controls and the otherwise incredulous fact that one is sitting on the 5th floor of the Time Warner building. If you’re here on a date or a press pass, make sure to ask for the table next to the window overlooking the park. For yes, Jazz has long-since arrived in New York. And we really have the networking of ones like Wynton Marsalis to thank for it.
And really, it was these environs which made the concert that much more interesting given the nature of the music itself.
The soloists were all openly idiomatic unto their own statements, carefully episodic, taking full advantage of the form laid out for them in each piece. The set began with a Reincarnation of a Lovebird that made light work (and heavy reharmonization) of a notoriously difficult lead, and furnished an instant showcase of the abilities of each musician on stage. Mingus’s music has always been linked to a certain exposition of virtuosity, and so it was not really surprising when the group took a sudden detour on one of the songs later in the set to a little Bach-like exposition between the flute and bass. Here, not only the instrumental ability of these musicians was disclosed in full, but consequently the obvious academic pedigree of this group. Once again, a validation of larger forms and of the musicians’ ability to present those forms (songs) through a resituation into something which is really no more than a relatively more complex chart to follow. And yes, all musicians on stage were following charts. Even during the Bach interlude, where the musicians were clearly following the music itself.
The telling highlight of the set though, was in the band’s presentation of the seminal Fables of Faubus, where Mingus’ anti-Jim Crow rhetoric is written in what seems like a negation of hate-experience into something inversely absurd. But in works likes these, the true measure of the material and its performance is in the extent to which the artist and the audience alike are able to confront each other.
So, when trombonist Frank Lacy yelled out (keeping up perfectly with the score):
“Boo! - Evil Nazi Haters! With yo’ Ku Klux Klan plan!”
…I was really most interested in the response of the crowd around me.
The most characteristic response from this notably well-attired audience came from the table to my left, where a bejeweled and tipsy woman who had otherwise been savoring her Homestyle Meatloaf with Sweet Onion Gravy and Mashed Potatoes (representing the so-labeled “Downhome” portion of Dizzy’s complete menu) looked up in sudden surprise, and burst into laughter a second later, perhaps even flecking her similarly amused companion with a bit of said meatloaf. Looking around I saw more bemused faces all around, responding to the admittedly weird gesticulations with which Lacy accompanied his cries, and broken cries on trombone which he had now broken down to only a snorting slidepiece.
“Boo White Nazi Supremacists!” And more laughter. And in a flash I recalled the title track off Mingus’s The Clown, where the ad-lib narrator tells the tale of a clown driven to his death by an audience which laughs at all the wrong moments in his act. Obviously there was some re-mixing of the idea going on here, insofar as it appealed to me, and yet I breathed a sigh of relief to hear that the avant-garde that Mingus had fought so hard for was still on the cutting edge of the critique.
The most difficult question raised by the art of Charles Mingus is, one might say, in understanding music where the exposition of such strident majesty runs into the hyperbole, varyingly ironic, which compensates for the artist’s always-indeterminate identity. It is a question, in other words, of understanding severe pain in an immediate relationship to loving beauty, or finding a position between these two indistinguishable worlds where the artist himself seemed dedicated to distinguishing the real point of difference. When the contrasts are so well set-up, however, in a place like Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, it seems as though Mingus’s music might still stand a chance in a world where the composer was always striving for the sharpest possible edge.
At the end of the set, Mingus’s “Better Get Hit” became the outro music of a perfectly executed 90 minutes. The friendly and accommodating wait staff was happy to bring us another round.
Mingus Dynasty
Photo courtesy of Frank Stewart
Mingus Dynasty
Photo courtesy of Frank Stewart
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