Epitaph (Charles Mingus composition)


Epitaph is a composition by jazz musician Charles Mingus. It is 4,235 measures long, takes more than two hours to perform, and was only completely discovered during the cataloguing process after his death. With the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation, the score and instrumental parts were copied, and the work itself was premiered by a 30-piece orchestra, conducted by Gunther Schuller and produced by Mingus's widow, Sue, at Alice Tully Hall on June 3, 1989, 10 years after his death, and issued as a live album. It was performed again at several concerts in 2007.
Accurately convinced that it would never be performed in his lifetime, Mingus called his work Epitaph declaring that it was written "for my tombstone."

1962 version

There was one ill-fated attempt to record some of "Epitaph" during Mingus's lifetime, in New York City on October 12, 1962. The album The Complete Town Hall Concert includes the tracks "Epitaph Pt. I" and "Epitaph Pt. II", as well as "Clark in the Dark", for trumpeter Clark Terry, who played in the band.
The musicians included:
Saxes and woodwinds
  • Danny Bank
  • Romeo Penque
  • Buddy Collette
  • Eric Dolphy
  • Charlie Mariano
  • Charles McPherson
  • George Berg
  • Zoot Sims
  • Jerome Richardson
  • Pepper Adams
Trumpets
  • Eddie Armour
  • Rolf Ericson
  • Lonnie Hillyer
  • Ernie Royal
  • Clark Terry
  • Richard Williams
  • Snooky Young
Trombones and tuba
  • Eddie Bert
  • Jimmy Cleveland
  • Willie Dennis
  • Quentin Jackson
  • Britt Woodman
  • Paul Faulise
Rhythm section
  • Warren Smith
  • Les Spann
  • Toshiko Akiyoshi
  • Jaki Byard
  • Charles Mingus
  • Milt Hinton
  • Dannie Richmond
  • Grady Tate
A review by Bill Coss appeared in the December 6, 1962, edition of Down Beat titled "A Report of a Most Remarkable Event", and was reprinted in the January 2005 edition.
The concert/recording was extremely disorganized. From the liner notes: "...this record represents a curious combination of open recording session and concert on a New York City Town Hall stage that held thirty musicians, two men still copying the music to be played, no play-back equipment, and a host of unbelievable tensions."
From Martin Williams's review: "The occasion was supposed to have been a public recording date, but the producers' announcements and ads somehow came out reading 'concert.' At one point during the proceedings, Mingus shouted to his audience, advising, 'Get your money back!'"
From the Coss article:
The problems seem to have arisen because Mingus had piles of new music in his head, and wanted to stage an open rehearsal which United Artists and producer Alan Douglas wanted to record and release. Then UA moved up the date five weeks, Mingus kept writing even newer music while rehearsals were underway, the musicians were unprepared, and audience members had apparently been expecting a fully rehearsed concert rather than a taping session with false starts and retakes.

1989 version

After Mingus's death, the score to Epitaph was rediscovered by Andrew Homzy, director of the jazz program at Concordia University, Montreal. He had been invited by Sue Mingus to catalogue a trunkful of Mingus's handwritten charts and in the process had discovered a vast assortment of orchestral pages written by Mingus with measures numbered consecutively well into the thousands. After some investigation, Homzy realized what it was that he had found and eventually managed to reassemble the Epitaph score. At that point Homzy and Sue Mingus got in touch with Gunther Schuller, who put together an all-star orchestra to play this very demanding piece of music. However, despite the stellar cast that was assembled, problems were again encountered. Thirty years earlier, charts were being copied in the wings before the show. This time, the charts were all computerized, but the software was buggy and again charts were being sight-read at the last minute.
This was no mean feat. Epitaph resembles many other Mingus compositions in level of difficulty. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, pointing at a passage in the score said, "That looks like something you would find in an Etude Book... under 'Hard'." And conductor Gunther Schuller stated "The only comparison I've ever been able to find is the great iconoclastic American composer Charles Ives." Despite all these challenges, however, the concert, at Alice Tully Hall in New York's Lincoln Center in 1989, was a critical triumph, if ten years too late for Charles Mingus to enjoy it. The same personnel performed the piece two days later at the Wolf Trap Farm Park outside of Washington, DC. A double-CD was later released by Columbia/Sony Records. The concert was also filmed, and broadcast on U.K. television around 1990. The 1989 recording at Alice Tully Hall was recorded by John McClure and David Hewitt on Remote Recording Services' Silver Truck.

Track listings

Personnel

Conductor
  • Gunther Schuller
Saxes and woodwinds
  • John Handy
  • Jerome Richardson
  • Bobby Watson
  • George Adams
  • Phil Bodner
  • Roger Rosenberg
  • Gary Smulyan
  • Michael Rabinowitz
  • Dale Kleps
Trumpets
  • Randy Brecker
  • Wynton Marsalis
  • Lew Soloff
  • Jack Walrath
  • Joe Wilder
  • Snooky Young
Trombones and tuba
  • Eddie Bert
  • Sam Burtis
  • Urbie Green
  • David Taylor
  • Britt Woodman
  • Paul Faulise
  • Don Butterfield
Rhythm section
  • Karl Berger
  • John Abercrombie
  • Roland Hanna
  • John Hicks
  • Reggie Johnson
  • Ed Schuller
  • Victor Lewis
  • Daniel Druckman

    2007 version

Let My Children Hear Music again presented Epitaph in 2007, including new sections discovered since the 1989 premiere.
The concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall was broadcast by and available online.

Personnel

Conductor
  • Gunther Schuller
Saxes and woodwinds
  • Michael Rabinowitz, bassoon
  • Douglas Yates, contrabass clarinet
  • Craig Handy
  • Steve Slagle
  • Abraham Burton, alto saxophones
  • Kathy Halvorson
  • Wayne Escoffery, tenor saxophones
  • Ronnie Cuber
  • Lauren Sevian, baritone saxophones
Trumpets
  • Ryan Kisor
  • Walter White
  • Jack Walrath
  • Dave Ballou
  • Alex Sipiagin
  • Kenny Rampton
Trombones and tuba
  • Sam Burtis
  • Ku-umba Frank Lacy
  • Andre Hayward
  • Conrad Herwig
  • Earl McIntyre
  • Dave Taylor
  • Howard Johnson, tuba
Rhythm section
  • Kenny Drew Jr.
  • George Colligan, pianos
  • Boris Kozlov
  • Christian McBride, basses
  • Johnathan Blake, drums
  • Christos Rafalides, vibraphone
  • Jack Wilkins, guitar
  • Mark Belair
  • David Nyberg, percussion

    Score

In 2008, the full score of Epitaph was published by Let My Children Hear Music, Inc, distributed by Hal Leonard.