I’m still swinging 24 hours after the concert. Mingus is so infectious and I got a chance to hear a big band playing it today. The Jazz School has run a series of workshops and concerts this week for the Canberra International Music Festival Fringe. Given work, I only got to this one, the ANU Big Band led by visitor Jamie Oehlers and playing the music of Charles Mingus. Here’s the repertoire: The shoes of the fisherman’s wife are some jive ass slippers; Nostalgia on Times Square; Moanin’; Goodbye pork pie hat; Fables of Faustus; Boogie stop shuffle. Shoes was done by a smaller group and would have been the most demanding of the pieces. The others were played by the full band. Jamie’s feature solos were excellent. Andy Butler’s solo piano on Shoes was outstanding. The transcription of Nostalgia by Reuben Lewis and the arrangement of Fables of Faustus were impressive. But it’s the group work that mattered to Mingus rather than the featured solos. The sheer exuberance and vibrancy of a big band letting go on these swinging grooves and growling blues melodies is what I’ll remember. And it’s this that has me singing to myself now, hours later as Boogie Stop Shuffles around non-stop. He may have been a cantankerous character but he was also a genius. Long live the soul of Mingus; a much loved star in the jazz firmament.
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