Big Band Sunday Lunchtime at Dean Street

NYJO - The Music of Charles Mingus

Presented by JBGB Events

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PizzaExpress Jazz Club (Soho)

NYJO – The National Youth Jazz Orchestra, following on from their major recent Dean Street concerts- in 2022 playing the music of Count Basie and in 2023, with a tour de force across the Blue Note catalogue, NYJO return in 2024 for the third year running with this new concert of arrangements of the works of the great 20th century jazz bassist and imaginative, original writer - Charles Mingus. NYJO provides an opportunity for gifted young musicians from around the UK to perform big band jazz in major concert halls, theatres, and on radio and television, and to make recordings, commission new works from British composers and arrangers, and to introduce a love of jazz to as wide an audience as possible, but especially to schoolchildren.

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£32.00
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“NYJO has never been conformist, never hewing to one particular line, never known for fawning replications and very deliberately these days, a vehicle for new possibilities”

Jazzwise Magazine

Book tickets for NYJO - The Music of Charles Mingus

The performing band is selected by audition and invitation and has a maximum age of 25. It performs around 40 gigs a year across the UK, the vast majority involving additional inspirational educational workshops for local schoolchildren, in partnership with the local Music Hub. It rehearses every Saturday at Woolwich Works, part of Woolwich's Royal Arsenal Riverside complex.

Charles Mingus was an American jazz bassist, composer, bandleader, pianist, and author. A major advocate of collective improvisation, he was one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers in history with a career spanning three decades and collaborations with other jazz greats such as Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Eric Dolphy.

Mingus's work ranged from advanced bebop and avant-garde jazz with small and midsize ensembles, to pioneering the post-bop style on seminal recordings like Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956) and Mingus Ah Um (1959), and progressive big band experiments such as The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963).

Mingus's compositions continue to be played by contemporary musicians ranging from the repertory bands Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty, and Mingus Orchestra, to the high school students who play the charts and compete in the Charles Mingus High School Competition In 1993, the US Library of Congress acquired Mingus's collected papers— including scores, sound recordings, correspondence and photos— in what they described as "the most important acquisition of a manuscript collection relating to jazz in the Library's history".

This NYJO programme is led by the engine room of the band, the rhythm section, and will showcase their “Emerging Professional” musicians as they solo over iconic Mingus tunes such as “ Moanin’ “ “Good Bye Pork Pie Hat”, and “Fables of Faubus” and many more.

This will be another wonderful opportunity for our audience to enjoy the music of brilliant young musicians who are the stars of tomorrows jazz scene.

Please enjoy this example of great soloing and sparkling ensemble playing by the NYJO Big Band- from a few years ago at the BBC Proms- playing their own arrangements of the jazz classic “Groove Merchant”.