Guildhall Jazz Orchestra presents Charles Mingus' 'Epitaph'
Guildhall Jazz Orchestra presents Charles Mingus' 'Epitaph'
Sat 19 November 2022
Stage time / 2:00pm
Doors / 1:45pm
The Guildhall Jazz Festival in association with the EFG London Jazz Festival features current and past students, Guildhall Jazz teachers, and special guests in a celebration of the wealth of creativity and originality within the Guildhall Jazz community.
Twenty-five years after its 1962 Town Hall debut, the original 500-page score to Epitaph was discovered by Montreal-based musicologist Andrew Homzy and pieced together bar by bar from hundreds of yellowing manuscripts he found in a wooden trunk in Sue Mingus’ living room. Finding Epitaph, says Homzy, was like discovering Beethoven’s “Tenth Symphony.”
Following Gunther Schuller’s 1989 performances and recording, Scott Stroman and the Guildhall Jazz Orchestra were next, performing it at the Barbican in 1998. To mark Mingus’ centenary year and as the gala event of the 2022 Guildhall Jazz Festival we welcome Mingus Dynasty saxophonist Wayne Escoffery to present the most complete version of Epitaph to date. A sprawling masterwork of 20 pieces written between 1940 and 1962, it includes sections previously recorded by Mingus in small-band settings including Better Get Hit in Yo’ Soul, Peggy’s Blue Skylight, Chill of Death (written when he was 17), This Subdues My Passion, and big band pieces including The Soul, written in the late 1940s for the Lionel Hampton band.
Twenty-five years after its 1962 Town Hall debut, the original 500-page score to Epitaph was discovered by Montreal-based musicologist Andrew Homzy and pieced together bar by bar from hundreds of yellowing manuscripts he found in a wooden trunk in Sue Mingus’ living room. Finding Epitaph, says Homzy, was like discovering Beethoven’s “Tenth Symphony.”
Following Gunther Schuller’s 1989 performances and recording, Scott Stroman and the Guildhall Jazz Orchestra were next, performing it at the Barbican in 1998. To mark Mingus’ centenary year and as the gala event of the 2022 Guildhall Jazz Festival we welcome Mingus Dynasty saxophonist Wayne Escoffery to present the most complete version of Epitaph to date. A sprawling masterwork of 20 pieces written between 1940 and 1962, it includes sections previously recorded by Mingus in small-band settings including Better Get Hit in Yo’ Soul, Peggy’s Blue Skylight, Chill of Death (written when he was 17), This Subdues My Passion, and big band pieces including The Soul, written in the late 1940s for the Lionel Hampton band.
