[Saduyre9de]

It was a while ago... or it seems like it was a while ago. Master works like that are rarely performed are quite different in person then they are on record. Dave Holland got Hugh to transcribe a lot of these master works and it's nice to see them being performed. It was nice to hear the realitive academic nature of BSSL compared to the blues orientated "Better Git...." and "Hatiain Fight Song" etc. They played BSSL once each set with different tunes to contrast it. The band was smoking and the turnout was mediocre. (pretty much two constants in the scene)

[tmobmobfil]

Story on Hugh Fraser in the Globe and Mail:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...ent/TopStories

[fount_pirat]

It's interesting that he's presenting Mingus music in a repertory context. I've long been an advocate of Mingus' stuff, and I've always felt that he's been shortchanged in the canon. I found out why when I put together a series of "Mingusmania" septets and sextettes in the mid-nineties (we played a few times at the Glass Slipper and were featured on Bravo Television). Mingus' stuff is really hard, man.

He seems to have two types of writing styles. Blues based, open ended stuff like "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting" that's hard to play because of shifting metric structures (like his famous gambit of moving back and for between 6/8 and 4/4) and stuff with insanely hard changes like "Remember Rockefeller at Attica." That and the fact that he wrotefor many different types of instrumentation makes it hard to play a lot of his stuff without significant re-orchestration, and that task is made difficult by his unorthodox (yet utterly consistent in it's internal logic. He's like Monk that way. Got his own system of counterpoint. Ellingtonian, but funkier) way of voicing intruments in the front line.

In analysing his autograph scores, one finds that he writes small band arrangements as if for a big band, with fully realized piano parts and specific voicings , yet there's all the OTHER stuff, (like "Moanin') where there's no written music at all, he just taught the players the parts orally.

Good luck, Hugh. Good on you, and Godspeed. I wish I could be there to hear it. I'd a never of been crazy enough to attempt "Black Saint." (although "Sue's Changes" is still in my quintet's book. We don't play it often, believe me.)

[fount_pirat]

Would anybody who saw this performance care to comment on it? I'm really curious as to how it came off.

[foltdan]

Yeah, Bri... Black Saint is a mutha. One of my faves.

[fount_pirat]

Thanks Steve. Wish I could have been there.

[NerbuitW]

In my ordinarily useless opinion, Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is one of the top 3 masterpieces of 20th century music! (The other two occasionally change - that one never does).

I was shocked recently to discover a certain local big-band leader had never heard it. I started asking around and continued to be surprised by how little known the work is amongst our jazz players and fans. I also asked Hugh Fraser and was relieved that he knew it well and agreed with my opinion of it.

It never occurred to me that any performance of the piece would ever exist outside the original Mingus recording (Impulse IMPD-174). Seemed to me that the recording and amazing performances by all concerned was so definitive there’d be no point in anyone else playing it. Not a rational concept, I suppose. Last year I heard the excellent Mingus Big Band version on Tonight at Noon: Three of Four Shades of Love and apparently there’s also a live version by the band. Still, with all due awe and respect for Hugh Fraser, the idea of hearing it at the Cellar scares me some. But you can be sure I’ll be there!