On this day: October 12, 1962 Mingus "Epitaph" at Town Hall

Mingus conducting from bass at Town Hall 1962. Photo by Chuck Stewart

October 12 – On this day in 1962, Charles Mingus recorded new music with an ensemble of 30 musicians at Town Hall in New York City – it turned out to be one of the most ambitious projects of its kind.

The concert was originally conceived of as a live workshop of newly composed music which would be recorded for an album, but at the last minute, the record company presented it as a concert and moved the date of the event up by 5 weeks, resulting in a lack of time to write and rehearse the music. Poor sound and other interruptions and distractions during the event and a union-mandated end-time left the musicians performing in the dark and led to the concert being considered a disaster by many, especially by Mingus himself, but the subsequent album showed the evening as far more successful than previously conceived, despite being produced without the composer’s involvement. Mingus correctly assessed that the full work, consisting of 22+ movements for 30+ musicians, would never be performed during his lifetime, causing him to title it Epitaph, declaring “I wrote it for my tombstone." The resulting album was first released on the United Artists label in 1962 as Town Hall Concert, then re-released in 1994 with additional tracks on Blue Note Records as The Complete Town Hall Concert. (Mingus returned to Town Hall in 1964 with a smaller group, which he recorded and released on his own label.)

After being rediscovered by Sue Mingus and musicologist/professor Andrew Homzy, Epitaph was finally performed in full at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in 1989, in a concert produced by Sue Mingus and conducted by Gunther Schuller. The success of this concert enabled the 30-piece band to tour concert halls around the world, and today the composition finds new life as a collaborative effort by Mingus Big Band musicians performing alongside local professional and university student musicians, such as at Yale in April 2022.