CHARLES MINGUS: Changes One & Two (1975)

CHARLES MINGUS
Considero que - pelo porte físico, pela postura, pela atitude, pelo (mau) comportamento, pelos desafios, etc - Charles Mingus talvez  tenha sido para o jazz o que Orson Welles foi para o cinema: um gênio incompreendido. Estes dois álbuns são essenciais na discografia de Mingus, uma vez que mostram
uma mudança significativa em sua música. Os álbuns, produzidos nos anos 70, mostram arranjos e composições, com um novo novo formato e uma nova sonoridade.
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CHARLES MINGUS
Charles Mingus (22 de Abril de 1922 – 5 de Janeiro de 1979) foi um contrabaixista, compositor e ocasionalmente pianista de jazz. Ele também ficou conhecido pelo seu ativismo contra a injustiça racial, assaz presente no seu país. Mingus é geralmente colocado entre os grandes nomes do jazz, gravando vários álbuns muito apreciados pelos amantes de Jazz. As suas melodias, não são muitas vezes re-gravadas, devido á sua natureza pouco convencional, no entanto Mingus foi também um influente e criativo músico, convidando para a sua banda artistas talentosos e, por vezes, menos conhecidos que ele achou que reuniam as características necessárias para a integrar. Tanto com se sabe no âmbito musical, Mingus tinha muitas vezes um temível temperamento, o que originou a sua alcunha no mundo do Jazz, "The Angry Man of Jazz" (O zangado homem do jazz). Este comportamento negativo, acabou por comprometer a sua integridade musical, resultando em autênticas erupções de raiva em cima do palco, embora ele tenha conseguído moderar o seu comportamento. É considerado, ao lado de Thelonious Monk e Duke Ellington, um dos três maiores
compositores da história do Jazz.
(Fonte: wikipedia)
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CHARLES MINGUS
One of the most important figures in twentieth century American music, Charles Mingus was a virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader and composer. Born on a military base in Nogales, Arizona in 1922 and raised in Watts, California, his earliest musical influences came from the church-- choir and group singing-- and from "hearing Duke Ellington over the radio when [he] was
eight years old." He studied double bass and composition in a formal way (five years with H. Rheinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and compositional techniques with the legendary Lloyd Reese) while absorbing vernacular music from the great jazz masters, first-hand. His early professional experience, in the 40's, found him touring with bands like Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and Lionel Hampton. Eventually he settled in New York where he played and recorded with the leading musicians of the 1950's -- Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington himself. One of the few bassists to do so, Mingus quickly
developed as a leader of musicians. He was also an accomplished pianist who could have made a career playing that instrument. By the mid-50's he had formed his own publishing and recording companies to protect and document his growing repertoire of original music. He also founded the "Jazz Workshop," a group which enabled young composers to have their new works performed in concert and on recordings. Mingus soon found himself at the forefront of the avant-garde. His recordings bear witness to the extraordinarily creative body of work that followed. They include: Pithecanthropus Erectus, The Clown, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Dynasty, Mingus Ah
Um, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Cumbia and Jazz Fusion, Let My Children Hear Music. He recorded over a hundred albums and wrote over three hundred scores. Although he wrote his first concert piece, "Half-Mast Inhibition," when he was seventeen years old, it was not recorded until twenty years later by a 22-piece orchestra with Gunther Schuller conducting. It was the presentation of "Revelations" which combined jazz and classical idioms, at the 1955 Brandeis Festival of the Creative Arts, that established him as one of the foremost jazz composers of his day. In 1971 Mingus was awarded the Slee Chair of Music and spent a semester teaching composition at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In the same year his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, was published by Knopf. In 1972 it appeared in a Bantam paperback and was reissued after his death, in 1980, by Viking/Penguin and again by Pantheon Books, in 1991. In 1972 he also re-signed with Columbia Records. His music was performed frequently by ballet companies,
and Alvin Ailey choreographed an hour program called "The Mingus Dances" during a 1972 collaboration with the Robert Joffrey Ballet Company. He toured extensively throughout Europe, Japan, Canada, South America and the United States until the end of 1977 when he was diagnosed as having a rare nerve disease, Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis. He was confined to a wheelchair, and although he was no longer able to write music on paper or compose at the piano, his last works were sung into a tape recorder. From the 1960's until his death in 1979 at age 56, Mingus remained in the forefront of American music. When asked to comment on his accomplishments, Mingus said that his abilities as a bassist were the result of hard work but that his talent for composition came from God. He died in Mexico on January 5, 1979, and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges River in India. Both New York City and
Washington, D.C. honored him posthumously with a "Charles Mingus Day."

(*) Mingus' masterwork, "Epitaph," a composition which is more than 4000 measures long and which requires two hours to perform, was discovered during the cataloguing process. With the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation, the score and instrumental parts were copied, and the piece itself was premiered by a 30-piece orchestra, conducted by Gunther Schuller, in a concert produced by Sue Mingus at Alice Tully Hall on June 3, 1989, ten years after Mingus' death. The New Yorker wrote that "Epitaph" represents the first advance in jazz composition since Duke Ellington's "Black, Brown, and Beige," which was written in 1943. The New York Times said it ranked with the "most memorable jazz events of the decade." Convinced that it would never be performed in his lifetime, Mingus called his work "Epitaph," declaring that he wrote it "for my tombstone."
(Source: Charles Mingus website)
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ALBUM REVIEW
1: Charles Mingus' finest recordings of his later period are Changes One and Changes Two, two Atlantic LPs that have been reissued on CD by Rhino. The first volume features four stimulating Mingus originals ("Remember Rockefeller at Attica," "Sue's Changes," "Devil Blues" and "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love") performed by a particularly talented quintet (tenor-saxophonist George Adams who
also sings "Devil Blues," trumpeter Jack Walrath, pianist Don Pullen, drummer Dannie Richmond and the leader/bassist). The band has the adventurous spirit and chance-taking approach of Charles Mingus' best groups, making this an easily recommended example of the great bandleader's music.

2: Along with its companion volume Changes One, this is one of the great sessions from one of the best working bands of the 1970s. Starting with the spirited "Free Cell Block F, 'Tis Nazi U.S.A," this volume also includes the vocal version of "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love" with guest singer (and acquired taste) Jackie Paris, a remake of the classic Mingus composition "Orange Was the Color of Her
Dress, Then Silk Blue," Jack Walrath's "Black Bats and Poles," and Sy Johnson's "For Harry Carney." The challenging repertoire from these December 1974 dates sustained the Jazz Workshop for several years; these are the definitive performances.
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MINHA OPINIÃO
Vou ser suscinto: só a composição "Duke Ellington`s Sound of Love" já bastaria para justificar a gravação destes álbuns: é coisa de gênio, mesmo...E gênios estão acima do bem e do mal, dispensando quaisquer considerações. OURO EM PÓ
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CHARLES MINGUS: Changes One & Two (1975)

PERSONNEL:
Charles Mingus - leader, arranger, bass
George Adams - tenor-sax (also sings "Devil Blues")
Jack Walrath - trumpet
Don Pullen - piano
Dannie Richmond

TRACKS/FAIXAS:

(*) Changes one

01 - Remember Rockefeller At Attica
02 - Sue's Changes
03 - Devil Blues
04 - Duke Ellington's Sound Of Love

(**) Changes two

01 - Free Cell Block F, 'Tis Nazi U.S.A.
02 - Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk
03 - Black Bats and Poles
04 - Duke Ellington's Sound of Love
05 - For Harry Carney