Thursday, August 21, 2008

Always bet on the Underdog

Via National Public Radio:

Considered to be Charles Mingus’ Magnum Opus, Epitaph is a difficult piece of music. Composed for a 31-piece jazz orchestra, it is somewhat infamous for having an incredibly monstrous score - four feet high and 4,235 measures long – and was discovered in Mingus’ closet 10 years after his death (1979).

The only performance of the piece during Mingus’ lifetime was, by most accounts “ a travesty.”

Conductor Gunther Schuller:

"There's this famous, legendary disastrous concert and recording session in Town Hall [in New York], where I happened to be present, And it was one of the most chaotic and frustrating and disastrous concerts that anybody has ever heard, because the music was so difficult and so strange. He hadn't had a chance to rehearse it properly and the copyists were, indeed, even still copying some of the music –- it wasn't even fully ready. And so the musicians couldn't handle it, and so eventually the concert was aborted…”

Apparently Mingus was so distraught from the experience that never visited the score again in his lifetime.

It’s been revisited a few times since its resurrection in 1989. They’ve even added an ending. Listen to the July 24, 2008 performance of Epitaph at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Gunther Schuller.

Also, read Beneath the Underdog, if you haven’t already.

1 comment:

Frank said...

It was nice to hear the music (thanks to NPR).

Let's all thank NPR for doing what we wished all other media companies would do - give us the opportunity to hear the hard to hear.

Seriously, give 'em $30/year. It's more than made up for by these types of performances.

I'm absolutely positive that NCB/FOX/CBS/ABC/CNN/HBO/SHO/COM/ETC would never let us hear Mingus' "Big Piece". It's all thanks to public broadcasting for this recording.

Really. I mean it.

How about $5. This one piece is definitely worth $5. Right?