Critical Reception
The New Yorker wrote that Epitaph represents the first advance in jazz composition since Duke Ellington's Black, Brown, and Beige, which was written in 1943. The New York Times said it ranked with the "most memorable jazz events of the decade". Convinced that it would never be performed in his lifetime, Mingus called his work Epitaph declaring that he wrote it "for my tombstone." Conductor Gunther Schuller said that Epitaph is "among the most important, prophetic, creative statement in the history of jazz.”
Read more about this topic: Epitaph (Charles Mingus album)
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