First-year student thrilled with role as stand-in for late, great Charles Mingus
Matthew Niedzwiecki never dreamt he'd be asked to "replace" the late, great bass guitarist Charles Mingus in a jazz concert, or that he'd play with one of Mingus's colleagues in front of Mingus family members. But that's exactly what happened on May 15, 2004 when Niedzwiecki joined the rest of the Brandeis Jazz Ensemble for a special concert in Slosberg Hall.
Niedzwiecki, of Lowell, Mass., played in a jazz ensemble in high school, but was initially hesitant to enter the Brandeis group. Instead, he took lessons with the ensemble's director, Artist-in-Residence Robert Nieske. Then, during his second semester, he joined the 15-member ensemble, which practices several hours each week and performs, on average, two concerts each year.
On May 15, Niedzwiecki played on campus at a big tribute to Charles Mingus. Joining the ensemble that evening was John Handy, who'd played alto saxophone with Mingus during the `50s. Mingus' first wife and son were in the audience. With massive understatement, Niedzwiecki says, "It was kind of nerve-wracking, holding down the bass chair because Charles Mingus was a bass player, one of the greatest of all time." But Niedzwiecki seized the moment and even enjoyed it. "It just ups your level of musicianship, to play with someone like that," he says. The event was somewhat of a "return" to Brandeis for Mingus, who was born in 1922 and died in 1979 from a rare nerve disorder. According to Mingus's official website, the performance of his "Revelation" at the 1955 Brandeis Festival of the Creative Arts "established him as one of the foremost jazz composers of the day." Brandeis later gave him an honorary degree.
Through Nieske, Niedzwiecki has become better acquainted with the Boston music scene. He sometimes listens to Nieske play double bass at the Top of the Hub restaurant on the highest floor of Boston's tallest skyscraper, the Prudential Center. "A lot of people go up there just to relax and listen to some great jazz," he says.
Niedzwiecki says he will major in either math or economics. He has already taken some introductory courses and said he enjoyed the professors' personal, approachable teaching style. Though an admitted quantitative reasoning person, he went against that grain and chose a University Seminar in Humanistic Inquiry, with a more humanistic bent: The Art of Living, taught by Russian Language and Literature's Professor David Powelstock. "The course was all about the meaning of life, so we read the Bible and the Iliad, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Lao Tzu, and Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky. There were a lot of different viewpoints from different countries about what it means to live a good life and be a good person," Niedzwiecki says.
Before applying to the University, Niedzwiecki said he heard a lot of good things about Brandeis. "Someone from my high school had come here before me, and I knew I wanted to go to college near Boston. Getting a Justice Brandeis Scholarship certainly piqued my interest, so I came to Spring Open House and stayed overnight. The people I stayed with were great. They weren't trying to sell me the school. They showed me around, and then we just hung out."