I picked up “Mingus,” a new album by Gebhard Ullmann and Tá Lam 11, at the store, mostly because Charles Mingus is my favorite musician ever. I kept my expectations in check, though, because I’ve heard a lot of musicians cover Mingus before and their versions, though often good, usually sound like thin imitations of the master’s.
Ullmann and his 10 bandmates sound different. As I listen, I can’t help but think of the conductor Gunther Schuller and his ensemble’s performance of “Epitaph” at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall a few years ago. That show just might be the best concert I’ve ever witnessed. Using everything from classical music to free jazz as tools, Ullman and his band drill into Mingus’s songs and mine the same reservoir of emotions that Schuller’s group did. But they do it without a bass.
Instead, they use 10 horns and an accordion to create brooding recreations of songs such as “Canon,” “Fables of Faubus” and “Reincarnation of a Lovebird” that, without warning, burst multi-layered torrents of energy. They keep the bones of Mingus’s songs, to be sure, but they add their own fleshy signature. As a result, “Mingus!” is the best impulse purchase I’ve made in years.
The band features:
• Gebhard Ullmann: bass clarinet, soprano
• Hinrich Beermann: baritone saxophone
• Daniel Erdmann: tenor saxophone
• Vladimir Karparov: tenor saxophone
• Juergen Kupke: clarinet
• Joachim Litty: bass clarinet
• Heiner Reinhardt: bass clarinet;
• Volker Schlott: alto saxophone, soprano saxophone
• Michael Thieke: clarinet, alto clarinet
• Benjamin Weidekamp: clarinet, alto saxophone
• Hans Hassler: accordion
