Stephanie Nilles - I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag: The White Flag

Cat. no: SSC1606
Format: CD
Barcode: 016728160629
Release Date: 30th April 2021
Genre: Jazz

The late, great bassist/composer Charles Mingus’ music was vehemently charged with indignation concerning the rights of the downtrodden.

His messages, both outright and nuanced, are touchstones for many musicians who choose to address these issues, including singer-songwriter/pianist Stephanie Nilles, who interprets Mingus’s canon on ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag - the white flag’.

Born six years after Mingus’s death, Nilles comes from a world removed from that of her muse. She is a white woman who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and studied classical piano and cello. Nilles’s initial introduction to jazz came through her younger brother’s bass study and his involvement with a summer jazz orchestra.

It was through her brother that her ears first caught the sounds of Mingus’s “Jump Monk,” igniting a spark that would catch up with her down the line. In May 2019, Nilles performed a transcription of saxophonist Charles McPherson’s solo on Mingus’s “OP” on a series of solo concerts in Germany. Radio Bremen producer Volker Steppat heard this and was immediately impressed.

Steppat asked if Nilles would be interested in recording an entire album of solo performed Mingus material, which she was ecstatic to try.

The recording was made in December 2019 at the Sendesaal in Bremen, Germany, the same hall that Mingus had performed his first German concert with his classic Sextet of Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, Johnny Coles, Jaki Byard and Dannie Richmond nearly 55 years earlier. Most of the pieces were recorded in first or second takes.

Tracks: Fables of Faubus / East Coasting / Lord Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me / O.P. / Goodbye Pork Pie Hat / Free Cell Block F, ‘Tis Nazi U.S.A / Devil Woman / Peggy’s Blue Skylight / Pithecanthropus Erectus / Remember Rockefeller at Attica / Alabama