Mingus Plays Piano
| Mingus Plays Piano | ||||
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| Studio album by Charles Mingus | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | Impulses! Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP, CD |
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Title (number) |
11 |
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running time |
50:03 |
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| occupation | Piano : Charles Mingus | |||
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Bob Thiele ( Michael Cuscuna Reissue) |
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Studio (s) |
RCA Studio, New York City |
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Mingus Plays Piano , subtitled Spontaneous Compositions and Improvisations, is a jazz album by Charles Mingus . It was recorded on July 30, 1963 at the RCA Studio in New York City and was released on Impulse the following year ! Records . This album with piano solo recordings by the bassist and band leader, seven original compositions and four jazz standards , falls out of the scope of his publications in that it does not contain an ensemble performance.
background
In the liner notes, Nat Hentoff mentioned the important role played by the piano in the creation of Charles Mingus' music: “I have never seen a Mingus apartment without a piano, and I have often heard a new Mingus Composition sounds like Mingus first played it on the piano. ”. Mingus, who first learned the trombone and then the double bass , always had a piano around him - his older sister was a piano student - but his interest in the instrument began to grow , especially during his work with Art Tatum . Working with his own ensembles in the 1950s, he used the piano to communicate to his musicians “the basic framework for his compositions and arrangements.” Hentoff quotes him from an interview with the British Jazz News : “I don't arrange the music in the usual meaning of the word. Most of the time I play the melody on the piano and sing the interpretation to the musicians, bending the notes in the way I want them to be played. "
According to the Mingus biographer Brian Priestley , Mingus' interest in piano playing increased so much in 1963 "through forced leisure [...] that he approached Bob Thiele about the idea of a solo album [...]."
Mingus himself was aware of the possible skepticism of listeners and critics in view of the fact that he was recording a piano solo album as a bassist:
- "All I can say, is that if a bass player can attempt what I've done here, by myself, some of the other musicians who are full-time pianists ought to at least consider practicing more."
Music of the album
The first track on the album, Myself When I Am Real, is (like Meditations for Moses and the closing number Compositional Theme Story ) a spontaneous improvisation by Mingus; Nat Hentoff sees in the recording the romantic, rhapsodic-lyrical side of Mingus' character, in contrast to "his supposedly 'angry' character". Mingus himself said: “Something like that comes out differently every time I play it. I get into a kind of trance when I play this kind of number. I can remember when we recorded this, I didn't seem to be breathless ”.
According to Brian Priestley, Myself When I Am Real was the track on the album that Mingus was most proud of.
- “For me it is an expression of what I feel, and it shows changes in tempo and key, even the variations of the theme fit into a composition ... I would say the composition as a whole is structured like a written piece Music."
It combines Mingus' idiosyncratic use of chords , as in the third "Movement" of The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963), with the waltz -Thena, which anticipates meditations from 1964.
Vernon Dukes ' I Can't Get Started has long been one of Mingus' preferred standards because of the interest in harmonic structures; his interpretation of the title is "meditative and contemplative." Mingus' version of the jazz classic Body and Soul also shows his "basic lyricism", with Hentoff emphasizing the influence of Art Tatum, Priestley also the slight Monk influence ("slightly Monkish").
In Roland Kirk's message , the first bit of the multi-instrumentalist music Roland Kirk has to do, a few years refers to the collaboration between the two musicians before, and is an expression of appreciation for Kirk's musical integrity and emotional directness. According to Priestley, the composition refers to Mingus' Old Blues for Walt's Torin (from the album Oh Yeah (1961), on which Kirk participated). "It's not like playin 'at home by yourself", Mingus said afterwards to a person from the studio (probably to Bob Thiele), who then asks, "Well, what can we do for you?"
For Nat Hentoff, the Eubie-Blake title Memories of You is another popular standard that “seeped into Mingus”. The following spontaneous composition She's Just Miss Popular Hybrid is dedicated to a friend of the musician. Priestley points out that it begins with a typical Mingus phrase , relates to the composition The Man Who Never Sleeps (1970) and removes it from one of the lines in Don't Be Afraid, the Clown's Afraid Too (from the album Let My Children Hear Music ).
Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blues is an early version of the ensemble piece of the same name, which was part of the Mingus band's repertoire from 1964 (can be heard on Cornell 1964 , The Great Concert, Paris 1964 and Changes One / Two ) . Mingus previously wrote the composition for the play A Song With Orange by S. Lee Pogostin. The spontaneousimprovisation Meditations for Moses , which has a ziat from Invisibly Lady , is followed by the composition Old Portrait , which appears several times under various titles in Charles Mingus' work; originally he wrote it as “God's Portrait” and later played it as “Self Portrait”, in the 1950s he recorded it as “ Portrait ”. The phrase between the ninth and twelfth bars refers to another Mingus title, "Once Upon a Time There Was a Holding Corporation Called Old America," which Mingus played in Monterey in 1965. I'm Getting Sentimental Over You is yet another "personal standard revival"; the album ends with the Suite Compositional Theme Story: Medleys, Anthems and Folklore , the longest and most episodic track on the LP. According to Priestley's analysis, it contains quotations from the songs When Johnny Comes Marching Home (a song from the time of the American Civil War ), I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair (an old salonsong) and Irving Berlin's patriotic song God Bless America .
Track list
- Charles Mingus: Mingus Plays Piano (Impulse A (S) 60, IMP 12172)
- Myself When I Am Real - 7:38
- I Can't Get Started ( Vernon Duke , Ira Gershwin ) - 3:43
- Body and Soul ( Johnny Green , Edward Heyman , Robert Sour , Frank Eyton ) - 4:35
- Roland Kirk's Message - 2:43
- Memories of You ( Eubie Blake , Andy Razaf ) - 4:37
- She's Just Miss Popular Hybrid - 3:11
- Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blues - 4:18
- Meditations for Moses - 3:38
- Old Portrait - 3:49
- I'm Getting Sentimental Over You ( George Bassman , Ned Washington ) - 3:46
- Compositional Theme Story: Medleys, Anthems and Folklore - 8:35
Compositions without copyright notice are by Charles Mingus.
reception
According to Brian Priestley, the album provides “a wide range of insights into the improviser-composer-arranger who first worked out his material on the piano”, as the title She's Just Miss Popular Hybrid shows in particular .
Scott Yanow rated the album four (out of five) stars in Allmusic and wrote:
- “Bassist Charles Mingus will never qualify as a virtuoso on the piano, but his technique was halfway impressive and his ingenuity really brilliant. This unique solo piano CD (re-released in 1997) [] is mostly fascinating, like listening to Mingus thinking aloud. "
Horst Weber and Gerd Filtgen particularly praised the “ trance character , which the spontaneously created own compositions partly convey.” Myself When I'm Real “no longer allows the question of whether Mingus is a good pianist. This becomes a minor matter when the impressionistic motifs, which contain the most diverse moods, pass you by. ”Likewise, with rolling piano figures in Roland Kirk's message , he creates “ a powerful sound that is reminiscent of the incredibly long-lasting tones ”of the multi-instrumentalist. From Meditations for Moses, however, one can hear “how Mingus designed the dramaturgy of his groups from the piano.” In the programmatic Compositional Theme Story lies “a large part of the music that Mingus heard in his life and that made him his own musical form of expression brought "; the spectrum ranges from children's songs , church music , romantic sounds to kitschy salon music .
The critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton , who rated the album with three (out of four) stars in their Penguin Guide to Jazz , said Mingus played "a little more than the composer's piano in the course of his career". His touch and sense of harmony is certain, even if hardly virtuoso. The most interesting are Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk , which is reduced to its essence in this way, as well as When I Am Real and the “thoroughly unabashed” Body and Soul . Even if Mingus Plays Piano is certainly not in the first row of Mingus albums, it is not only interesting for collectors.
Harvey Pekar says in JazzTimes that Mingus, who has no great piano technique, stays within his musical limits and hardly ever made any mistakes. Most of the time his game is "thoughtful and harmonically amazing". Although his main instrument is the double bass, many pianists would consider themselves lucky if they could play as creatively as he was.
Robert Spence wrote on the occasion of the CD release in 1997 in All About Jazz that the album was worth the 7½-minute Myself When I Am Real alone ; “Mingus' piano playing sounds like Claude Debussy is playing Bill Evans , or maybe the other way around. The piece is delicate and emotional, as strong as The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady in its own way , but a little more introverted ”. Myself When I Am Real “is like a brief look at the silent core of what made the Mingus albums so successful across the board.” I Can't Get Started , on the other hand, is “precise and wistful”, while body and soul are bubblingly embellished. Roland Kirk's Message opens with a fanfare reminiscent of Duke Ellington . Another highlight of the album is Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blues , which without the hornblowers that Mingus used on the European tour in 1964 ( Clifford Jordan and Eric Dolphy ) does not appear so high-spirited and instead more profound, with a fragile meditative one Feel. Mingus briefly sings a fragment of the lyrics while breathing; it shows the "complete bond with his art". Spence mentions the flamenco influence in the "plaintively troubled" Meditations for Moses . The final track is an excerpt from the well-known Mingus technique of changing moods, even if this is less emotional in Myself When I Am Real , Mingus' performance is no less masterful. Some riffs of this title ended up in the brilliant meditations of the 1964 tour.
In summary, Spence states that Mingus Plays Piano is one of the most beautiful recordings of this time. It is “in itself perhaps the more personal statement than even his masterpiece 'The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady'. Although everything from Mingus is worth hearing, 'Mingus Plays Piano' is 'first class' - far from mere novelty, but rather one of the most beautiful hours of a great artist. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i cf. Nat Hentoff, Liner Notes of the album (1963)
- ↑ In early 1954 he played with the pianist in Miami Beach for four weeks (Priestley, p. 55)
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Brian Priestley: Mingus. A Critical Biography. Quartet Books, London, Melbourne, New York City, ISBN 0704322757 , pp. 149 f.
- ↑ a b c Review of the album in All About Jazz (1997)
- ↑ Review of Scott Yanow's Mingus Plays Piano album at Allmusic (English). Retrieved October 21, 2014.
- ^ Horst Weber, Gerd Filtgen: Charles Mingus. His life, his music, his records. Gauting-Buchendorf: Oreos, undated, ISBN 3-923657-05-6 , p. 141 f.
- ^ Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide To Jazz on CD. (8th ed.) Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .
- ↑ Review of the album in JazzTimes (1997)