What's Up?
Since Charles Mingus' death in 1979, Sue Mingus has created and continues to direct repertory ensembles that carry on the music of her late husband. The most well known is the Mingus Big Band, a New York institution, which performs weekly at the Jazz Standard, and alternates with the Mingus Dynasty and the Mingus Orchestra. In 1989, she produced Mingus’ monumental Epitaph in its premiere at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. She has produced numerous Grammy-nominated recordings with Mingus repertory bands and the 2011 Grammy winning Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz Standard, as well as several legacy recordings.
Life & Work
Bio:
Charles Mingus — one of the most important figures in twentieth century American music — wrote music that is still far ahead of its time. A virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader and composer, Mingus recorded over a hundred albums and wrote over three hundred compositions, leaving the second-largest legacy in American music after Ellington. Mingus received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Smithsonian Institute, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Following his death in 1979 from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), the Library of Congress acquired his entire catalog of work including original scores, recording tapes, and personal effects. An NEH grant enabled the cataloging of all his compositions. Microfilm copies were donated to the New York Public Library. He has also been honored with a US Postage stamp.
The critical and popular success of the Mingus repertory bands testifies to the power of Mingus composition. The availability of his music through published arrangements, educational books, school courses, and workshops, coupled with the hugely successful new Charles Mingus High School Competition, have extended the reach of his legacy. Students, musicians, scholars, and fans are exploring and embracing Mingus in ever-increasing numbers.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).