[nat sound: Jazz ensemble playing Haitian Fight song]
In the spirit of the Met Gala’s theme… “Tailoring Black Style,” Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music honored a jazz legend in style.
On Tuesday night, Bienen paid tribute to Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner Charles Mingus with a concert that brought his powerful sound and message back to life.
The event drew people from both the University and the Evanston community. Fans gathered to celebrate the legacy of one of the most influential figures in American music. Mingus was not only an accomplished jazz composer, bassist, pianist, and bandleader. His performances were emotional and deeply personal.
ETHAN PHILION: Charles Mingus’ music is unique in a lot of ways. I think it draws from so many parts of the jazz tradition. I think it’s often dealing with subject matters explicitly that we should all think about if we’re in this music. And it also requires you to be listening to the band in a really kind of wide-eared way that takes some getting used to.
That was Ethan Philion, a guest bassist, composer, and bandleader. He led the ensemble and created the “Meditations on Mingus” project, which headlined the 2022 Chicago Jazz Festival.
Ethan explained that Mingus’s music demands a certain amount of rigidity but also creative freedom.
PHILION: I think beyond that, just like any music, playing like the notes is a challenge, especially because some of these songs have pretty complicated melodies. But I think the most challenging thing is balancing the openness with needing to know all of your specific parts. So being ready to kind of do anything and have the band be flexible and the music go in a certain direction, but then also know where you are in the midst of that chaos and get back to what’s specifically there.
That kind of music takes vulnerability and awareness—something the student performers had to lean into.
Ethan wasn’t the only one who found Mingus’s music meaningful. Sebastian Gomez, a Bienen junior, shared how Mingus’s work created a safe space for him.
SEBASTIAN GOMEZ: I resonate with a lot of the themes, especially I myself, I grew up outside of America, and so it’s interesting how a lot of what is meant to be talked about as America, as this dominating holding corporation over the world, is something that is explained to us as people who don’t grow up in the US, but as people who grew up in the US, it’s not my impression that they get the same sort of impression. So that spoke to me.
Mingus’s music explores themes of identity, struggle, and hope. Most of it reflects the challenges of being a Black man and musician in America. His music transcription expresses pain, anger, joy, and freedom all at once.
That’s what brought Evanston resident Patty Campbell to the performance.
PATTY CAMPBELL: The inspirational, thoughtful, soulful, spiritual message that runs through it, that inspired it, that sort of filled the whole thing up on top of the amazing music that he ties in or that it’s driven by such powerful themes, makes it just a powerful experience.
Some audience members came as longtime fans, while others were new to Mingus’s work and were simply excited to learn.
BEVERLY KREISS: Yeah, there’s some dissonance and some… Oh, I don’t even know how to express it. But I’m really… It’s diverse all over. I love having the guitar in there, too. I don’t recall a guitar in a jazz ensemble.
That was Beverly Kreiss, another Evanston resident.
Whether jazz or pop, one thing is sure…music gives a voice to emotions and experiences that words alone can’t capture. And at Bienen, the celebration of jazz legends doesn’t stop with Mingus. The school plans to honor more icons in future performances. As Mingus’s own joyous song says: “Better get it in your soul.”
From WNUR News, I’m Rosemary Mbao.
[nat sound: Jazz ensemble playing Better Get In Your Soul]
