Cool cat. I love how Mingus is so in tune with how his cat (Nightlife) thinks, sensing how to encourage him, how to avoid freaking him out, how to lead him alo

Cool cat. I love how Mingus is so in tune with how his cat (Nightlife) thinks, sensing how to encourage him, how to avoid freaking him out, how to lead him along. Some of Mingus's best known works (Mingus Ah Um, Black Saint and The Sinner Lady, etc.) are organized group improvisations, with multiple wind instruments playing improvised lines at once. It's different from big bands like Ellington's where you have featured soloists and everybody else playing charts (even if the rhythm section does some improvising), and it's difficult to achieve balance of the various elements under such circumstances. I get a sense from this article how Mingus manages to get inside the heads of his collaborators, to keep their trust, and lead them towards a shared vision.