Customer Reviews

Life and Times of Malcolm X

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Though unfortunately little known Davis' "X" is a very listenable and exciting score. I was privileged to hear a concert staging of excerpts at the Chicago Humanities festival in 1992. This deserves to be back in print and, hopefully, staged again. The music is jazz-inflected and very much in the fabric of American nationalist composers such as Bernstein and Copland. Get this if you can find it and play it for others. It deserves to be heard.

As a performer, who actually recorded the project, I think the album gives a minimal picture of the actual excitement which occured the actual times this was performed on stage.
The Fruit of Islam in regalia at City Opera and the applause received in this production's infantry was like no other pathos I've experienced.

Performances by Priscilla Baskerville as Ella (Malcolm's Mother) is still haunting, the Choruses ("We are a nation") are still thrilling and just the overall storytelling aspect is both educational for our younger (Hip Hop generation), even though they may not be music buffs, they'll get the story.

Combinations of Classical, Minnimalism and Jazz permeate in a stylistic way that can be captured by no one else like Anthony Davis.

I, on a personal level, found this project a great achievment and I hope you'll hear the concept as it started with Mr. Davis' 13 piece group (Epistome) and grew to a full Orchestra!

The CD is hard to find, so Unless there are other projects in the works to re-record this project...you need to go ahead and get this one!

Cornelius White,
Tenor