When tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake came forward for his feature on "Sweet Sucker Dance," the Charles Mingus song with the above Mitchell lyric, he found exactly the right proportion of romance and virtuosic gale force. The band hugged every intricacy of Sy Johnson's ballad arrangement.

It takes a certain musician to play the demanding, eccentric works of Mingus, the late jazz bassist and composer. The Mingus Big Band, under the offstage direction of Sue Mingus, Charles' widow, has 14 such musicians, all world class, spanning several generations. It is perhaps the most racially integrated large ensemble operating today.

The group's weekly gig at Iridium in New York has given it an extraordinary solidity and sense of daring. Heavy snow couldn't keep the Philly audience away.

Drummer T.S. Monk, son of Thelonious, was slated to share the bill but bowed out because of illness. Standing in on short notice, pianist Cyrus Chestnut performed a rewarding set of Monk compositions, with Ben Williams on bass and Byron Landham on drums. Although this was not Chestnut's working trio, the rapport was strong, the music alive with spontaneity.

But the Mingus group, with its unstoppable rhythm section in bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Donald Edwards, set the evening's agenda.

Philly pianist Orrin Evans landed improvisatory bull's-eyes on the opening "Haitian Fight Song" and the closing "Pedal Point Blues." Alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, a Philly-born rising star, followed the formidable trombonist Conrad Herwig on "Ysabel's Table Dance," steering the piece into choppier waters.

"Children's Hour of Dream," a movement from the through-composed epic Epitaph, offered a window into Mingus' Third Stream writing, nearly classical in character.

Flute, tuba and bowed bass intersected in this dark and highly enigmatic work, the sheer difficulty of which could be gathered from a badly flubbed trumpet entrance. No matter; the mistake only heightened the music's edge-of-seat impact.