NYJO is returning to Pizza Express on Dean Street for a third consecutive year of celebrating some of the greatest figures in 20th-century American jazz history. This year, the band is presenting a new concert of arrangements of works by the bassist and writer, Charles Mingus.
Mingus was an American jazz bassist, composer, bandleader, pianist, and author. A major advocate of collective improvisation, he was one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers in American history, with a career spanning three decades and collaborations with other jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Eric Dolphy.
Mingus’s work ranged from advanced bebop and avant-garde jazz with small and midsize ensembles, to pioneering the post-bop style on seminal recordings like Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956) and Mingus Ah Um (1959), and progressive big band experiments such as The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963).