This centenary year of Charles Mingus’ birth deserves to be a landmark celebrated everywhere creative music thrives, not just in the jazz world that has lauded him since the 1940s. A composing genius and double bass virtuoso, the LA-raised original disrupted jazz insularity with a repertoire that ran from New Orleans street-struts, to hard-swinging blues and bebop, jazz/classical splicings from Stravinsky, Bartók and Duke Ellington and played and spoken themes echoing his civil-rights campaigning.
