MINGUS WORLD - Maria Vicentini Salvatore Maiore

MINGUS WORLD (CVLD320)

01 - Monk, Bunk & Vice Versa  4:30
02 - Fables Of Faubus  6:40
03 - Goodbye Pork Pie Hat  4:51
04 - Jelly Roll  3:35
05 - Duke Ellington Sound Of Love / Oh Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me  7:55
06 - O.P.  3:10
07 - Sue's Changes  6:18
08 - Jump Monk  4:38
09 - Better Get Hit In Your Soul  4:18

total time: 45:58

All compositions by Charles Mingus
All arrangements by Salvatore Maiore and Maria Vicentini

Maria Vicentini, violin and viola
Salvatore Maiore, cello and double bass

88.2kHz/24bit original recording made live-in-studio at San Giacomo Spazio d'Arte, Italy, on November, 30, 2019
Marco Lincetto choose a pure DECCA TREE recording set up, using three RIBERA R12 vacuum tube microphones

Production: VELUT LUNA
Executive Producer: Marco Lincetto
Balance Engineer: Marco Lincetto
Recording Engineers: Cristiano Zatta & Marco Lincetto
Editing Engineers: Cristiano Zatta & Marco Lincetto
Mix and Mastering Engineer: Marco Lincetto
Photo: Marco Lincetto
Design and layout: L'Image

Kingus Mingus

The older I get, the more irritated I become by the banality of narratives about jazz and its personalities, confined to clichés ranging from the "good-natured, perpetually laughing fellow" to "genius and recklessness," passing through a series of platitudes that I'll spare you and myself.
The older I get, the more I rejoice when I come across the works of musicians of every generation who don't stop at stereotypical formulas, but instead engage in healthy research and in-depth exploration, guided by a conception of jazz as a great crossroads of cultural contributions.
The reinterpretation of Charles Mingus's masterpieces by Maria Vicentini and Salvatore Maiore, while maintaining with great brilliance its effervescent thematic flow, also enhances its contrapuntal values, its vocation for dialogue, its courage for experimentation, and its taste for colors typical of the beloved Ellington, but also of Oscar Pettiford, here delightfully honored with "O.P.," and not coincidentally, he too was a cellist as well as a double bassist.
All of this is done with instrumental competence, commitment to planning the path, execution "without trickery and without deception," but at the same time with the lightness and subtle irony, whether in improvisations or in obligatos, that characterize mature yet fresh and creative musicians, capable of that not-taking-themselves-too-seriously which is actually the antechamber of seriousness.
In short, a great service to Mingus, who, if there were still a need, reveals himself as an artist of broad visions, far beyond the boastful and vain barroom brawler that so many voices (…including his own…) have superficially described him as.

Bruno Tommaso