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In 2022, the jazz world celebrated the centenary of the birth of one of the brightest jazz giants – bassist and composer Charlie Mingus. Exactly on his birthday, April 22, Sunnyside Records released a tribute album Living in Sound: The Music of Charles Mingus dedicated to his memory.
The soul and initiator of this project is Harry Scoler, a professor at the famous Berkeley College, a music critic and writer and, of course, an acting clarinetist with a great career behind him. Once upon a time, back in 1974, in Syracuse, New York, young Harry discovered the music of Mingus in the master Moves’ album that year. She made a huge impression on Scoler, he became a loyal fan of Mingus’ work, read his autobiography Beneath the Underdog with great interest. Many years later, in 2018, Scoler came up with the idea of recording an album of works performed by Mingus and shared his dream with saxophonist Walter Smith III. The latter agreed to produce the project and showed real miracles in this capacity. Just look at the composition of the recording participants, see what stars he managed to collect: for the piano Kenny Barron, on bass – Christian McBride, Nicholas Peyton plays on the trumpet, Jonathan Blake plays behind drums, in one of the tracks sings the incomparable Jazzmeya Horn, and an excellent string quartet was also invited. But that’s not all. When the program was prepared, Walter invited equally brilliant masters – Darcy James Argy, Ambrose Akinmuzir and Fabian Almazan – to write arrangements. They were granted absolute creative freedom in their work. By August 2021, everything was ready, and the entire composition of the project participants recorded this program in two days.
The result is in front of you, and anyone who hears Living in Sound: The Music of Charles Mingus can appreciate the great work of such a bright team. I was bribed by this result from the first track, because the album began with my favorite play by Mingus (and I’m not alone in this) Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. The Skoler clarinet sounds great in this thing, and the strings adequately support the elegantly solemn atmosphere of the composition arranged by Almazan. Peggy’s Blue Skylight is very good for Barron and especially McBride, who had to act as if as Mingus himself. He, along with Scoler and strings, decorated Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love, a play that Mingus dedicated to his favorite jazz composer. The 1971 song Remember Rockefeller at Attica Mingus, who often responded to various events in American life, was written in the wake of the riot of prisoners in Attica prison and the behavior of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller in this regard. Nicholas Peyton’s trumpet and Harry Scoler’s clarinet masterfully convey the nervous and disturbing atmosphere of this play. In Moves, Peyton and Horn demonstrate a spectacular duo of trumpet and human voice, and Invisible Lady is very good at experienced Barron. The album ends with a play by Scoler himself Underdog, which looks like the author’s signature under his work.
The album is powerful, and I won’t be surprised if we see it among the Grammy nominees, or maybe it will bring its creators the Golden Gramophone itself.
© & (p) 2022 Sunnyside Records
9 tks / 65 мин
(Harry Skoler – cl; Kenny Barron – p; Christian McBride – b; Johnathan Blake – dr; Jazzmeia Horn – voc; Nicholas Payton – tp; Megan Gould, Tomoto Omura – vi; Karen Waltuch – viola; Noah Hoffeld – cello;)
Link provided by Mixed Media
Leonid AUSKERN
Readers have seen this name more than once in the reviews of his releases on the site. Two years ago, we also published a review of the previous album of the Dave Zinno’s Unisphere ensemble called “Stories Told” (2019). And after 2019, as you know, came the year marked by the sign of the COVID-19 pandemic …. … It seems to me that it is just right to introduce a special concept: “post-covid jazz”. Thousands of musicians locked in their homes during a lockdown, deprived of the opportunity to perform in front of an audience, have only one option left: to compose music and hope that the clouds will someday dispel. Some people still managed to give network concerts, but the bulk of them worked at home, for the future. And in 2021, a lot of albums appeared based on these materials, albums in the music of which one can almost physically feel the performers’ joy from the possibility of new meetings, while at least in the studio. “Fetish” is one of them. When Zinno and the musicians of his band gathered in the studio in November 2020, each of them brought the material he had accumulated. It has accumulated in as many as 16 songs. As a result, a 12-track program was selected for recording the album. All the musicians who played on “Stories Told” participated in the recording of the album, plus they were joined by Zinno’s old partner, Argentine keyboardist Leo Genovese, famous for his performances with Esperanza Spaulding, and also, as a guest, another, in addition to Raphael Barata, a Brazilian trombonist Rafael Rocha.
The album contains compositions and arrangements by Ray, Tucker, Genovese, Bloom and, of course, Dave Zinno himself – “Fetish”, “So Close So Far”, and “Nile”. The music of the ensemble, which is still mostly hard-bop in style, breathes with energy, joy of musicians’ communication with each other and, of course, mastery that has not disappeared anywhere. The album was recorded in two sessions, six hours each. As Dave himself says, “This project is the culmination of a year without live music. This record contains all the energy and emotions that have accumulated and have not found a way out for such a long time. Hopefully people will feel what we felt while making this album.” Zinno doesn’t have to worry – you can really hear it in the music of “Fetish”.
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Music industry consultant and publicist Ginny Shea has garnered international exposure for her clients through radio and video promotion, print media, and her vast industry network.
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