Jazz Articles about Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk: Monk In Tokyo

by Jim Santella
July 1, 2001

Recorded May 21, 1963, this two-disc reissue represents classic Monk. Adventurous in his creative interplay with Charlie Rouse, Thelonious Monk wove lines that turned unexpectedly time and again. On his way to worldwide acclaim, Monk was already there musically. The 24-bit digitally remastered sound on this collection brings every nuance to the listener: clear as a bell and exciting. With walking bass and a swinging drummer, Monk and Rouse roll through familiar songs.

As they chase each other through “Bemsha ...

Thelonious Monk: Live At The Jazz Workshop

by Jim Santella
July 1, 2001

In the same year that Thelonious Monk appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, he recorded several live sessions for Columbia. This 2-CD set features two and a half hours at San Francisco’s Jazz Workshop, recorded November 3rd and 4th, 1964 with his working quartet. Nearly half the reissue consists of previously unreleased material. The rest, of course, was originally issued on two LPs in the 1980s as Columbia C2 38269 with the same title. Thus, this reissue comes to ...

Thelonious Monk: The Columbia Years (1962-1968)

by Jim Santella
June 1, 2001

The first thing you notice about Monk is the clipped phrases and unexpected turns in his compositions. With Charlie Rouse and above average rhythm sidemen, Thelonious Monk always turned heads. This three-disc compilation includes his familiar compositions as well as those not quite so familiar. They’re all fascinating and worthy of dedicated study.

Disc One centers on reissued studio sessions in trio and quartet format. At the piano, Monk thrills with his use of unique tone clusters and devil-may-care keyboard ...

Thelonious Monk: Thelonius Monk Trio

by David Rickert
April 1, 2001

Ben Franklin reported in his autobiography that he once spent the better part of a day sharpening an old ax, determined to return it to its original luster. He finally gave up, concluding that perhaps “a speckled ax was best after all". By this he meant that sometimes the imperfections inherent in things are what make them worthwhile. Music is no different; sometimes in the quest for perfection, we end up sacrificing character. No one better exemplifies this philosophy than ...

Thelonious Monk: Complete Prestige Recordings

by Derek Taylor
September 1, 2000

One of the primary incentives of box sets is the promise of previous unreleased material. Their comprehensive nature points facilitates (and often mandates) the inclusion of any and all extant recordings by an artist during a given time frame. Frequently such sweeping attention to discographical detail comes at the cost of playability. Verve’s exhaustive approach to the catalogs of Billie Holiday, Bill Evans and even Bud Powell are perfect cases in point, trading up playability for what sometimes seems like ...

Thelonious Monk: Complete Prestige Recordings

by Mark Corroto
September 1, 2000

Sometimes I scare myself. Just when I start believing that I haven’t progressed in my jazz record amassing to the designation a ‘collector,’ a box set like The Complete Prestige Recordings comes along and I deem it a ‘must have.’ Let me explain, in our household essential recordings by jazz artists are acquired without guilt (“we don’t have the remastered copy of Kind Of Blue, of course we must get it). While others require either the convoluted logic such as ...

Thelonious Monk / Sonny Rollins: Thelonius Monk & Sonny Rollins

by Douglas Payne
November 1, 1999

Hard as it is to believe, states this disc's back-cover blurb, “Thelonious Monk was widely dismissed as an eccentric, while many found the young Sonny Rollins's tenor far too aggressive compared to the then-cool norm." As time passed, though, Monk became progressively more Monk-like (and less likely to explore anything outside of his own increasingly familiar repertoire) and Rollins continued to carve out an aggressively individual style of his own. Today, Thelonius Monk & Sonny Rollins seems positively tamed by ...