Original The Living Theatre Presents The Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop with Kenneth Patchen flyer, March 16 and 20 [1959]

New York: The Living Theatre, 1959. Vintage two-color "The Living Theatre Presents The Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop with Kenneth Patchen / Monday evening, March 16 at 8:00 and 10:30 / Friday, March 20 at Midnight" flyer (1959).

Charles Mingus first conceived of the jazz workshop from classic workshops, where musicians and composers would exchange ideas and develop compositions, while studying at Los Angeles City College in 1943. After moving to New York in 1951 Mingus began to develop the workshop with a loose group of rotating musicians to develop innovative interpretations of standards and new compositions. By 1953 he had organized a series of jazz workshop concerts at the Putnam Central Club in Brooklyn. Early participants included Max Roach, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, and Art Blakey. While some musicians dubbed the workshops a "university of jazz," others regarded them as "jazz sweatshops," because of the rigor demanded and Mingus' forceful, and frequently onerous, personality. After his death in 1979, Charles Mingus' wife, Sue Mingus continued the Jazz Workshop with the repertory bands, the original Mingus Dynasty quintet and septets, the Mingus Big Band, and the Mingus Orchestra, and is continued today.

An integral influence to both the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat Generation, poet and novelist Kenneth Patchen was a creative polymath, exploring collaborations and multi-media approaches to his work. In 1942 he worked with composer John Cage to create the radio play "The City Wears a Slouch Hat," and in 1957 begun exploring jazz poetry with the Chamber Jazz Sextet. Patchen also created painted books and picture-poems, fusions of original poetry and paintings. In 1959, Patchen spent two weeks with Mingus in New York, culminating in The Living Theatre performances announced in the flyer found here. Patchen, who suffered from chronic pain due to a spinal injury incurred in 1937, and found temporary respite from a spinal fusion operation in 1956, underwent exploratory surgery upon his return to San Francisco from New York, which not only eliminated any relief he had gotten from the spinal fusion, but further damaged his spine, leaving him largely bedridden and in severe pain for the rest of his life. It was at this time that he created some of his most celebrated picture-poems and painted books.

8.5 x 13 inches. Near Fine.

[Book #158560]