Word: epitaphs
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This botched masterwork is titled Epitaph, and its composer was Charles Mingus, the protean jazz bassist who died in 1979 at age 56. "There has been nothing like it in jazz, before or since," says Gunther Schuller, the multifaceted composer, conductor and musicologist who edited the score, which was discovered among Mingus' papers after his death. Schuller directed a proper world premiere of the work at New York City's Lincoln Center last year. (CBS has issued a recording of the performance.) He was at the podium last week for another Manhattan performance, which was to be reprised...
Colacello can be funny when he notes that the drawback to linking up with high-visibility people like Imelda Marcos is "their tendency to attract assassins." But mostly, he is petty and meanspirited. He fittingly closes with a bit of celebrity mugging that serves as a pathetic epitaph for his putative patron. In a group invited to Warhol's house after his death, Colacello takes the opportunity to steal into Warhol's private bathroom so that he can catalog the anti-aging cosmetics and acne ointments for inclusion on the last page of this book. These two creatures of hype...
...attentive readers. Some of yesterday's faddiest publications, like Rolling Stone, built on precisely that kind of approach to become today's prosperous graybeards. Many media watchers had recognized similar prospects for 7 Days, which in April won a National Magazine Award for general excellence. It was an ironic epitaph: the magazine had gone out of business one week earlier, citing low ad pages, a slack economy and a dearth of interested buyers...
CHARLES MINGUS: EPITAPH (Columbia). Jazz, in today's approved jargon, is called Afro-American classical music. No work has better claim to that description than Epitaph, a monumental composition (more than two hours long) by the protean jazz bassist who died in 1979. Shifting from blues to Ellington-like mood pieces to cacophonous yawps, the work is scored for a 30- piece band. It was performed once in Mingus' lifetime, haphazardly. This live recording comes from Epitaph's real world premiere, at New York City's Lincoln Center last June. Composer and jazz historian Gunther Schuller led an all-star...
...Marley and the Wailers: Legend (Island, 1984). Marley died in 1981, but this collection of some of his best songs was no epitaph. It was a perpetual baptism of Jamaican soul...