From the first unaccompanied notes of Lauren Sevian’s baritone saxophone it was clear that the Mingus Big Band was in powerful, energetic form, both as the highlight of this year’s Jazz Weekend at the Bath International Music Festival and at the midpoint of their current British tour.

Once Sevian’s growling sax established a crisp ostinato, the band roared in behind her, willing the audience to be swept along in the tide of its commitment to Charles Mingus’s music. His composition Moanin’ included an extended solo from Sevian, and also a brilliant trumpet outing for Ryan Kisor, with a repetitive choppy descending phrase that corkscrewed through the valves against the pounding rhythm of the band.

In Mingus’s original groups, the tension between his bass and Dannie Richmond’s drums moved the beat around, changing the tempo at will, introducing complex cross-rhythms and setting the atmosphere for the entire repertoire. In Boris Kozlov (playing Mingus’s own lion-scrolled bass) and the drummer Johnathan Blake, it has found worthy successors. The two produced an epic exchange of phrases during the first number, and their interplay continued throughout two high-energy sets. On Nostalgia in Times Square their spontaneous tempo shifts were miraculous, particularly behind the mellifluous trombone of Conrad Herwig, yet they fell back selflessly for the bluesy playing of pianist Kenny Drew Jr.

His closing trio piece, Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love, with Kozlov bowing high into the cello register, showed that the band is not all bombast and derring-do, but is also capable of the melancholy reflection that was also an integral part of Mingus’s musical world.

Recently in America the band has been playing Epitaph, a sprawling 180-minute work that Mingus (who died in 1979) never heard performed. Excerpts from it, notably Children’s Hour Dream, showing the range of Mingus’s writing, from Stravinsky-like voicings to jagged jazzy chording, were the most powerful pieces by what is currently the world’s most on-form jazz big band. If it is this good in concert, it’ll blow the roof off Ronnie Scott’s club when it winds up there tonight.

*The Mingus Big Band plays Ronnie Scott’s, W1 (020-7439 0747), tonight and tomorrow

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