"Bassic Truth" the Vocal Music of Charles Mingus at California Jazz Conservatory

About

For more than three decades Ellen Johnson has been involved as a singer and lyricist with the vocal music of Mingus in concerts and recordings. Granted permission by Mingus’s wife, Sue Mingus, Johnson has recorded six Mingus compositions with original lyrics to three of them. The concert, “Bassic Truth” (a day before Mingus’s 91st birthday) will be the first time that Johnson has performed these compositions in the San Francisco Bay Area and will showcase her lyrics along with Joni Mitchell, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and those of Mingus himself.