Director: Ramón Cardo
Saxs: Wayne Escoffery, Perico Sambeat, Enrique Oliver, Pedro Cortejosa, Tete Leal, Antonio González, Florencio Juan, Francisco Blanco “Latino” and Sergio Albacete. Trombons: Vicent Pérez, Victor Colomer, Francisco Soler, José Diego Sarabia and Pedro Pastor. Trumpets: David Martínez, Julián Sánchez, David Pérez, Roc Albero, José Carlos Hernández and Pep Garau. Tuba: Elohim Porras. Basson: Juan de Dios Robles. Clarinet, bass clarinet and double bass clarinet: José Mateo. Guitar: Carlos Medina. Doublebasses: Bori Albero and Pablo Báez. Pianos: Daahoud Salim, Pablo Mazuecos. Drums: Andreu Pitarch.
Charles Mingus (1922-1979) was a unique, exciting, creative force and a reference for several generations of jazz players. A double bass player, pianist, composer and conductor, Mingus is a jazz legend with an extensive and varied body of work and an almost transitional style straddling several schools: from swing to avant-garde, but also taking in bop, Latin and, even classical music, while showing strong admiration for Duke Ellington’s work. Biting, irascible, sarcastic and a fighter against racism, Charles Mingus came down to posterity as an essential figure in 20th-century music and culture.
He also left an unpublished work, ‘Epitaph’, discovered by Professor Andrew Homzy in 1989. The musicologist and conductor Gunther Schuller arranged and premiered it the same year in New York. In fact, Mingus himself had already submitted a sketch of the score in 1962. ‘Epitaph’ is a monumental work, the equal of the best compositions of Ellington, Stravinsky, Beethoven or Debussy. It’s a compendium of the extraordinary, multi-faceted personality of Charles Mingus.
The work returns to Barcelona more than 30 years after it was last performed, also at the Palau de la Música Catalana, as part of the Barcelona Jazz Festival on 3 November 1991, with the same orchestra that premiered the piece at the Lincoln Center two years earlier, conducted by Gunther Schuller. This time, it is brought here at the initiative of Clasijazz, one of the most fascinating projects on the Spanish jazz scene. Founded in Almeria in 1998, the Clasijazz association has been extraordinary active ever since. With its founder, Pablo Mazuecos, it has launched some very high quality initiatives in recent years, working with artists of the calibre of Maria Schneider.
The Clasijazz Orchestra, the organisation’s flagship, performing for the first time in Barcelona, brings together promising young Spanish jazz musicians, particularly from Andalusia, Catalonia and Valencia, with figures from the calibre of Perico Sambeat, Francisco Blanco ‘Latino’ and the American Wayne Escoffery, the only one of its members to have performed this piece before (in 2007, in a line-up conducted by Gunther Schuller). Like Mingus’s work, the Clasijazz Orchestra is a monumental band, straddling classical and jazz music, with 33 performers under the baton of Ramon Cardo – a saxophonist, big band player, and travelling companion of Sambeat, Latino and other great musicians from the Valencian scene. There can be no better way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Mas i Mas Festival.
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