Label: Ambiances Jazz Catalog ID: AM_185 Squidco Product Code: 11638
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2009 Country: Canada Packaging: Cardstock Gatefold Sleeve 3 panels Recorded live at The Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill, Montreal on May 30-31, 2008 by Jacques Laurin.
"Tears came to my eyes when I started reading Normand Guilbeault's transcriptions of tunes like "What Love" and "The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady". I guess a pilgrim reaching Mecca for the first time must be experiencing similar feelings, or an art lover who finally gets to see a long-time favorite painting "in the flesh." Mingus's music is controversial, politically engaged, generous, warm, and passionate. It is not for the lukewarm and the undecisive. There is something simultaneously provocative, sexual, and mystical about it. It draws a wide landscape of America, an epic fresca that runs deep into the roots of jazz music. Very few American composers have successfully depicted their continent this perfectly, except maybe Duke Ellington and Charles Ives. You cannot enter Mingus country like a traveller on an organized trip, or a visitor on a museum tour - you have to throw yourself into it, body and soul. It's a huge territory with several hundred compositions. I have always listened to Mingus's music, but I had never given serious thought to the idea of really exploring it as a performer. It seemed to me that the music was too viscerally tied to Mingus himself, leaving little room for interpretation. In other winds, for a long time I though you couldn't actually "play" Mingus. The Normand Guilbeault Ensemble has been proving me wrong for 14 years now." -Jean Derome, January 2009