Charles Mingus – The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott’s album art

On April 22, 2022, Charles Mingus (1922–1979) would have turned 100 years old. Resonance Records celebrated the jazz giant’s centenary with a previously unreleased recording by his sextet. The Lost Album comprises pieces recorded live at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London on August 14 and 15, 1972. From LondonJazzCollector’s raving review:

Music doesn’t get more exciting than this. Heard here at the last leg of their 1972 European tour, each of the players confident and seasoned in the Mingus playbook and each other. The Sextet performance is astonishing “organised chaos”, Mingus at the helm at his very best […] This album is just fabulous, it would be criminal not to press more than the initial 5,000 batch.

Released on Record Store Day in a limited triple LP vinyl edition, the album also comes as a triple CD set, with a 16-page booklet.

The “impossible” typeface used for Mingus’s name is a version of Zelek, originally conceived by Polish designer Bronisław Zelek and issued by Mecanorma in the year of the recording. The particular font in use is Bron, a competent digitization made by Jeremia Adatte in 2014. Bron (short for Bronisław) comes in layer fonts that facilitate the bichromatic effect seen here.

Bron is supported by Priori Sans, which was designed in London by Jonathan Barnbrook and Marcus Leis Allion, and “borrows heavily from much of the early 20th-century typography in London” [Barnbrook].

The original photography on the front and back cover is by Jan Persson/CTSIMAGES. John Sellards Design provided the production graphics, with art direction from Burton Yount.

[More info on Discogs]