Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus
| Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Hal Willner | ||||
|
Publication |
||||
| Label (s) | Columbia | |||
|
Format (s) |
CD |
|||
|
Title (number) |
18th |
|||
|
running time |
71:45 |
|||
| occupation |
|
|||
|
Hal Willner |
||||
|
Studio (s) |
Mastersound Studios, Astoria, New York City and JD Studios, Madrid , Los Angeles |
|||
|
||||
Hal Willner Presents Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus , as its full title, is a concept album produced by Hal Willner with compositions by Charles Mingus . It was recorded with various artists in New York City , Madrid and Los Angeles in 1992 and released on Columbia Records .
The album
The producer Hal Willner had previously made tribute albums for the composers Nino Rota (1981), Kurt Weill (1985) and Thelonious Monk ( That's the Way I Feel Now , 1988) and worked with artists from various genres, such as Todd Rundgren , Carla Bley , Joe Jackson , Steve Lacy and Dr. John ; the latter also participated in the album dedicated to Charles Mingus. Central to this project was to use the timbres of the instruments, which had been created by the composer Harry Partch , to create well-known Mingus compositions such as Canon , Eclipse , Weird Nightmare , Haitian Fight Song , Self-Portrait in 3 Colors , Pithecanthropus Erectus or Meditations on Integration combined with excerpts from Mingus' autobiography Beneath the Underdog .
The idea for this concept album came about in the late 1980s when Willner met Mingus widow Sue Graham Mingus , who eventually co-produced the album. During the search for ideas - only the inclusion of Mingus texts was certain early on - I met Francis Thumm , who worked as a musician and teacher in San Diego and had previously played in Harry Partch's ensembles and was therefore familiar with his instruments . The idea arose to use these instruments paired with conventional jazz instruments, such as glass bottles in various sizes ( cloud chamber bowls ), the bass marimba and the marimba eroica as the most powerful and dramatic means of expression of Partch's instruments, as well as the chromolodeon (a Pump organ from the 1930s), the "harmonic canon" in the form of 44 strings stretched over a wooden resonance box, a surrogate kithara and various gongs.
Weird Nightmare turned out to be "a bizarre and wonderful one-time event," according to reviewer Brian Olewnick in the All Music Guide . The central formation in this project consisted of musicians from the New York scene, such as the bassist Greg Cohen , the guitarist Bill Frisell , the trombonist Art Baron , the percussionist Michael Blair and the drummer Don Alias , who were supported by guests Gary Lucas , Marc Ribot , Henry Threadgill , Robert Quine and Vernon Reid were accompanied. They played with different artists from different fields; there were Robbie Robertson (in Canon, Part 2 ), Dr. John (on Freedom ), Keith Richards and Charlie Watts (on Oh Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me ), Henry Rollins (who recites the poem Groovy in Purple Heart ), Leonard Cohen and Diamanda Galás (in Eclipse ) and Chuck D as singer with Gunslinging Bird , the writer Hubert Selby ( The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife ) and the wind ensemble The Uptown Horns as an accompanying group for the Charlie Watts / Keith Richards pieces. In terms of instrumentation , the Open Letter to Duke arranged and directed by Bobby Previte , which is characterized by country music instruments such as mandolin, violin, washboard and banjo, is out of the ordinary. The titles with the Uptown Horns are also more conventional ; In Tonight at Noon, for example, the brass section dominates; in heavily on the Blues dominated Oh Lord Do not Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me Keith Richards' vocals and guitar is emphasized and the Uptown Horns framed.
The highlights are the playing of Partch's Marimba Eroica by Francis Thumm in Pithecanthropus Erectus , combined with the guitar and samples by Robert Quine , the version of Gunslinging Bird , in which text passages from Mingus' autobiographical novel Beneath the Underdog performed in rap by Chuck D. become. The album ends with Dr. John spoken and sung Poem Freedom and finally Elvis Costello's interpretation of the title track in the closing recapitulation .
Parts of the recording sessions were shown in the documentary Weird Nightmare - A Tribute to Charles Mingus by Ray Davies . The All Music Guide gave the album the highest rating.
Most of the recordings with the core formation were made at Mastersound Studios , Astoria, in New York City; the Bobby Previte ( Open Letter to Duke ) band was recorded at the A&R studio in New York; the tracks with Charlie Watts, Keith Richard and the Uptown Horns were recorded in Madrid.
The titles
- Hal Willner Presents Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus (Columbia 472467-2)
All compositions are by Charles Mingus; the dates in brackets refer to the first recordings of the Mingus formations.
- Canon (Part I) 3:20 (1973)
- Meditations on Integration 3:47 (1964)
- Canon (Part II) (contains Playing Chess with Bobby Fischer in Bellevue Reverie , from Beneath the Underdog ) 3:45
- Jump Monk 3:57 (1955)
- Weird Nightmare 3:07 (1960)
- Work Song 7:06 (1955)
- Self-Portrait in 3 Colors 3:29 (1959)
- Purple Heart (contains Groovy from unreleased parts of Beneath the Underdog ) 2:38 (1954)
- Tonight at Noon 5:31 (1957)
- Gunslinging Bird - Or If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats (contains The Fire at the Coconut Grove , from unreleased parts of Beneath the Underdog ) 1:40 (1957)
- Weird Nightmare (Interlude) 0:37
- Reincarnation of a Lovebird / Haitian Fight Song (Montage) 4:48 (1960/1955)
- Open Letter to Duke 4:53 (1959)
- The Shoes of The Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers (contains My Lives' Graves and Incarnations , from Beneath the Underdog ) 2.37 (1971)
- Oh Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me 6:48 (1961)
- Eclipse (contains the poem Chill of Death ) 7:15 (1960)
- Pithecanthropus Erectus 5:43 (1957)
- Freedom 2:52 (1962)
- Weird Nightmare (recapitulation) 0:40
swell
- Hal Willner, Sue Mingus, Jeff Rosen: Liner Notes
- Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus at Allmusic (English)
Remarks
- ↑ In the Cover Text Hal Willner went on to say that he was about at an early stage of the project, sound collages with material from old Folkways -Schallplatten as Street and Gangland Rhythms , Mushroom Ceremony of the Mazatec Indians of Mexico or The Kiowa Peyote Meeting to use and Coupling these sounds with a psychedelic muzak album ( Lawrence Welk Plays the Beat Goes On ). When he presented these ideas to Sue Evans, along with the album Roots of Black Music in America - Some Correspondence Between the Music of the Slave Areas of West Africa and the Music of the United States and the Caribbean , Willner learned that Charles Mingus knew exactly this record . This set the course for further action.
- ↑ Mingus first played it at the Town Hall Concert , October 12, 1962.