Today's New York Times features a full "Jazz Review" of Elvis Costello's collaboration with the Charles Mingus Orchestra in a concert this past Wednesday night at the Beacon Theatre. I will try to included it all:
JOINING THE MINGUS LEGACY, JUST LIKE THE OTHER FANS by Jon Pareles Romance, rage, art, ancestry, risk, camaraderie and an endless scuffling quest are encompassed in the music of Charles Mingus. Elvis Costello is neither the first to cherish those qualities, nor the first to put them in lyricsw, but he stretched himself to try both when he collaborated with the Charles Mingus Orchestra in a concert on Wednesday night at the Beacon Theatre. If Mr. Costello had not been a songwriter, he would be the epitome of the passionate, knowledgeable music fan. He has made it his bueinesss not only to voice appreciation for musicians from the country singer George Jones to the pop songwriter Burt Bacharach, but to collaboratte with them. He couldn't work with Mingus, who died in 1979, but he has been dropping by the Thursday-night shows at Fez of the Mingus Biob Band and the Mingus Orchestra, and sometimes singing with them. The orchestra is distinguished from the big band by instruments like bassoon and French horn; both are repertory groups overseen by the composer's widow, Sue Mingus. They uphold the boisterous luxuriance of the Mingus legacy while delving ever deeper into his repertory. For concerts in Los Angeles and New York and an appearance on the Mingus orchestra's next album Mr. Costello wrote lyrics for Mingus compositions and adapted his own songs for the group. In orchestral arrangements by Sy Johnson, Eaarl; McIntryre and others, Mingus compositions beecame the constantly shifting coalitions of a city in motion. Horn brawls turned into chorales; woodwind dissonances resolved as close-harmony embraces; rhythm parts splintered off but stayed connected. The music refracted past jazz eras through modernist complexity, with shifting meters and harmonic transformations, yet stayed grounded in the blues. Mr. Costello based his lyrics on Mingus's titles, which he called "a gift" to a songwriter. The nervy "Hora Decubitus" becakme an insomniac affirmation of life, while "Jellyroll" meditated angrily on the way great jazz musicians clowned around to survive: "a joke with a curse in the middloe." In Mingus's knotty ballad lines Mr. Costello heard love affairs filled with complications and regrets. "Self-Portrait in Three Colors" became a jazz nocturne as he wondered, "Did I stay away too long?" He didn't make things easy on himself. Mr. Costello chose compositions with leaping, chromatically warped melody lines that were made for instruments not voices. It waws difficult for him to reach all the notes, much less add subtleties. He waws better off witih the self-tailored melodies of his own songs, as the arrangements carried him into realms suggesting film noir and imaginary bygone ballrooms. "Clublaned" -- as applicable to jazz musicians as to rockers -- dissolved vertiginously from mambo to waltz to jazz. Rough-hewn but wholehearted, the music sounded like a work in progress or maybe just one of those urban encounters that holds out tantalizing possibilities. END OF ARTICLE Surely Jon Pareles, who has written numerously about Joni is aware of Joni's collaboration with the then living Charles Mingus. The presence of the absence of such a mention is very ingriguing. From Pareles' description, it seems that Elvis Costello (another of my favorite artists) has chosen much the same route that Joni did for her interpretation. At least Mr. Pareles could have mentioned that in hers, Joni was certainly able to add a volume of subtleties. Too bad that Joni didn't get such healthy advance press help for her Mingus collection. It is good to rememeber that as vilified Joni remembers that project, it was voted downbeat Magazine's Album of The Year. Because of that work, Joni appeared on the downbeat cover, and her name was larger than Count Basie's! I'd be interested if any listers had current information about the relationship between Joni and Sue Mingus. CC "Mutts of the planet, and shoot me down for alibis." -- JM _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
