Lindgren Magnus / Breinschmid

Jazz At Berlin Philharmonic Xiii: Celebrating Mingus 100

Label: Act

Genre: Jazz / Avant Garde

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CD Digi / Cardboard €20.99

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The centenary of the birth of Charles Mingus, in April 2022, has served to reinforce his importance in twentieth-century music. His “achievements surpass in historic and stylistic breadth those of any other major figure in jazz.” (New Grove Dictionary). Mingus could be angry, even violent, but also loving and tender, and all of these aspects of his complex character are reflected in his music. As he once said, “I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I am changing all the time.”

Extremes of emotion are the very truth and core of Mingus’s music, and they are reflected in the six compositions by him heard here, on “Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic – Mingus 100”. The concert was one of the main events marking the centenary and took place on 13 April 2022 in the concert series curated by Siggi Loch. This album is a live recording from that concert. At one level, it was ‘just’ a concert. There were no protests. No basses or chairs were deliberately broken. Nobody took a shotgun and aimed it at a lightbulb. And yet, as is clear from this recording, the nine musicians who appeared on stage at this concert – and who mostly did not know each other before this project – each threw her or his whole musical essence into this project, while staying true to Mingus’s spirit and to his unique way of expressing defiance and dissent.