Jazz fans, prepare to board your jetfoils. For one night only, the renowned Mingus Big Band is gracing Macau with its hard-swinging sound.

This fourteen-piece jazz orchestra, once named the best in the world by the Washingon Post, is continuing the legacy of bassist and composer Charles Mingus, who died in 1979. Mingus was a bona fide jazz baby, born in Nogales, Arizona in the early twenties, and studied firsthand the vernacular style of titans like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.

But the brawling blues sections and crazy tempo shifts Mingus used in his music fast earned him a name of his own. “For sheer melodic and rhythmic and structural originality,” wrote Whitney Balliett for the New Yorker after Mingus’ death, “his compositions may equal anything written in western music in the twentieth century.”
Since ‘79, the jazz genius’ widow, Sue Mingus, has created a handful of repertory ensembles to carry on her late husband’s work. New York’s Mingus Big Band is the greatest of these groups, with residencies at some of the world’s best jazz clubs, and six of its eight records nominated for Grammy awards.

What lifts the Big Band above the normally tired genre of tribute group is its creativity. The band’s habit of frequently changing its players means a constantly novel approach to Mingus’ vast and varied canon, while it keeps alive the lusty, bluesy soul of his oeuvre. Instead of relying on the bassist’s best-known work, these hip music maestros dig deep into their mentor’s challenging repertoire, scoring old and new arrangements that evoke the finest parts of Charles Mingus’ extraordinary sound.

So jive your way across the water, kids. The big cats are coming.

Samantha Leese