Personnel: Charles Mingus (bass); John Handy (alto saxophone); Clifford Jordan (tenor saxophone); Jane Getz (piano); Dannie Richmond (drums).

Recorded at the Jazz Workshop, San Francisco, California on June 2 & 3, 1964. Originally released on Debut (86017). Includes liner notes by Rachel Sales.

Digitally remastered by Kirk Felton (1990, Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, California).

Personnel: John Handy (saxophone, alto saxophone); Clifford Jordan (saxophone, tenor saxophone); John "Captain John" Handy (alto saxophone); Jane Getz (piano); Dannie Richmond (drums).

Audio Remasterer: Kirk Felton.

Liner Note Author: Rachel Sales.

Recording information: The Jazz Workshop, San Francisco, CA (06/02/1964/06/03/1964).

Unknown Contributor Roles: Clifford Jordan; Jane Getz; John Handy.

Much has been made of Mingus' 1960s Workshop sessions. Workshop concerts placed a premium on experimentation and featured a changing roster of musicians, compositions, arrangements and approaches in an informal, yet musically rigorous and highly adventurous atmosphere. RIGHT NOW is a recording of one such concert (taped in San Francisco in 1964 at a club called, oddly enough, the Jazz Workshop) and gives a strong sense of what these events were like.

Including two lengthy pieces: "New Fables" and "Meditation (For A Pair Of Wire Cutters)," the disc captures Mingus exploring, almost in collage-style, improvised musical ideas, radically shifting tempos, passages of fragmented melody, cacophony and tight thematic interactivity. Joined by powerhouse drummer Dannie Richmond, tenor saxman Clifford Jordan (whose fiery solo on "Fables" is particularly noteworthy), pianist Jane Getz and John Handy on alto sax, Mingus covers the bottom (and middle and top) with his extraordinary bass playing. An almost hour-long landscape of sophisticated, exploratory jazz compositions, RIGHT NOW is valuable as both a historical document and a musical adventure.