Thanks frog, I hoped you would follow up.
Yes, I knew that Mingus Dynasty was not a specific group of players, but drawn from those available in a larger collection. I suspect every member of that collection is a top flight musician, and so there is no let down regardless of who participates at a given time.
I came away with two major impressions regarding the musicians.
First, the two who I would say were most "underrated" (to keep with our theme here) were Hill and Cruz. Hill was extremely dynamic in the sense of loud to soft. On some numbers his emotion coiled up and sprang from his body as he bounced about in front of and over the keys. Yet other times he barely whispered the notes. All with feeling and in tune (thematically) with the other musicians. Cruz was simply cool and nonchalant, overall effortless while keeping perfect time with creative steady and dynamic moves.
And not to be politically incorrect, but I was impressed that two Russian born musicians (Alex and Boris) who immigrated to the US displayed such depth and feeling for music written by Mingus. This was seemingly in defiance of some comments on this site about influence of background as it relates to or might limit jazz expression.
But that’s just my view.
Yes, I knew that Mingus Dynasty was not a specific group of players, but drawn from those available in a larger collection. I suspect every member of that collection is a top flight musician, and so there is no let down regardless of who participates at a given time.
I came away with two major impressions regarding the musicians.
First, the two who I would say were most "underrated" (to keep with our theme here) were Hill and Cruz. Hill was extremely dynamic in the sense of loud to soft. On some numbers his emotion coiled up and sprang from his body as he bounced about in front of and over the keys. Yet other times he barely whispered the notes. All with feeling and in tune (thematically) with the other musicians. Cruz was simply cool and nonchalant, overall effortless while keeping perfect time with creative steady and dynamic moves.
And not to be politically incorrect, but I was impressed that two Russian born musicians (Alex and Boris) who immigrated to the US displayed such depth and feeling for music written by Mingus. This was seemingly in defiance of some comments on this site about influence of background as it relates to or might limit jazz expression.
But that’s just my view.