Charles Mingus’ Epitaph: A Unique Musical Vision

I had the pleasure recently of experiencing a truly remarkable performance of one of Charles Mingus’ greatest jazz works, Epitaph.

Part of the Guildhall Jazz Festival 2022, this stunning set lasted over two hours. Directed by Scott Stroman, it showcased the talents of many of the young members of the Guildhall Jazz Orchestra, fine musicians all. And featured special guest Wayne Escoffery, award-winning tenor saxophonist and bandleader, who is also a member of the Mingus Big Band.

Scored for a 30-piece jazz orchestra, the grand sweep of the music is simply thrilling. It takes your breath away. Shifting from expansive, protean pieces, to old-time blues and gospel numbers, to romantic ballads.

Running through it all is a sense of change and unpredictability as the mood moves from joyous to lyrical to reflective. And back again. These sudden shifts of tone and rhythm keep you completely engrossed by the music unfolding in front of you.

Curiosity is its own reward

Listening to the concert reminded me that, in addition to being a virtuoso bassist and inspiring bandleader, and innovative composer of small group works, Mingus was capable of writing dazzling, large-scale pieces.

His compositions took elements from all the music he had experienced while growing up, including New Orleans jazz, swing and bop. He incorporated the liberating energy of black church music in his work. And also reflected classical influences, such as Ravel and Prokofiev, to create a new musical language.

In a fascinating interview in JazzTimes, Gene Santoro, author of a notable biography of Mingus, Myself When I Am Real, said: ‘As a composer, Mingus wrote such an array of different size and type of pieces, they cover the emotional and psychological colors of the rainbow… He was insatiably curious and he would take music from anywhere, whether it was the jazz or the classical forms that he loved, cumbias from Colombia or Indian ragas. He was always looking for new and different things, and ways to synthesize them into what he did. He was interested in figuring out how things work and absorbing them, and that’s one mark of a true artist and composer.’

Nicknamed ‘The Angry Man of Jazz’, Mingus was undoubtedly a larger-than-life character, with a mercurial temper. But he was also capable of great tenderness in his personal life.

Just as importantly, he held deep-seated convictions about the need for racial and social justice in the United States. To take but two examples, consider songs such as Fables of Faubus, sending up the racist governor of Arkansas, and the wonderful Oh Lord! Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me, which, I think, speaks for itself!

Mingus’ great triumph was to translate these emotions, passions and beliefs into his music and create something entirely new.  

Restoring a lost masterpiece

It’s a marvel really that we can experience Epitaph at all. The original score was only discovered because his wife, Sue Mingus, invited the musicologist Andrew Homzy to her apartment to catalogue Mingus’ work some years after his death. Homzy stumbled across a 500-page collection of yellowing manuscripts in an old wooden trunk.

He realised they formed a single piece of work, apparently written over a twenty-year period, that included a few songs which had already appeared in other small-band recordings (eg. Better Get It in Your Soul). And used numbering clues left on the scores to reassemble and edit the work.

He brought composer and bandleader Gunther Schuller onto the project, and, working with Sue Mingus, they prepared the 18-movement piece for its first proper performance in 1989 in New York's Lincoln Centre. It’s a shame Mingus wasn’t there to enjoy the rapturous reception. But you can watch Schuller, as well as Sue Mingus, reflect on the genesis of the work in a fascinating documentary by Ger Poppelaars.

A living testament to a shared dream

Epitaph has been performed live several times since then. And the original 1989 performance is available on DVD/CD. As Schuller says in his liner notes: ‘This recording, while not the perfect realization of Epitaph -- can that ever be achieved? -- is an enthusiastic, dedicated, loving recreation, which now at last brings Mingus' magnum opus to life.’   

Amen to that. Mingus had called it Epitaph because he despaired it would ever be performed in his lifetime, saying ‘I wrote it for my tombstone.’ So, it’s fitting in 2022, Mingus’ centenary year, that this ambitious, sprawling masterwork could be experienced again. Enjoyed live, as a unified piece, in all its glory.

Listen to Epitaph. Feel Mingus’ presence. And let the music overwhelm you.

Photo: Tom Marcello Webster, via Wikimedia Commons