Sentimental Work: Raphaël Merlin on Charles Mingus’s Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

The Ébène Quartet formed in 1999 and I joined three years later. One of the reasons I knew we’d work well together was that all four of us loved jazz music – both playing and listening to it. We could rehearse for six or seven hours on Schubert or Ravel, but at the end of the day we’d always finish with a jazz improvisation session…