BCNC Reedsman Brent Bagwell in Charlotte Viewpoint: “I come from a family that is fairly musical in the extended branches,” says Bagwell. “When I began to take an active interest in playing instruments, no one was surprised and everyone was down with it. I played some guitar and lots of bass at first, in rock bands and whatnot, and came back to playing reed instruments late in the game, when I was 23 or 24. Much of my musical discovery has been on my own, especially jazz. I just started buying [John] Coltrane and [Charles] Mingus records and that was it, man. The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady turned my ears around…when I first got into jazz, I fell hard; listening day and night to everything!”

From an email correspondence with Bagwell after a mention of the Mingus album: “That record changed my life….! Did you read the liner notes from Mingus’s psychiatrist? Heavy.”