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Concert Promoter Danny Scher
by Lawrence Peryer
In this episode...Spotlight On host Lawrence Peryer chats with long time concert promoter, Danny Scher. Danny had an illustrious career working with legendary concert promoter, Bill Graham but as a younger man, at the start of his career, booked Duke Ellington and Vince Guaraldi. As a high school student in Palo Alto, CA, Danny Scher came up with the idea to book Thelonious Monk to play his school's auditorium. A recording of that special concert finally saw the light of ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk Quartet: Live Five Spot 1958 Revisited
by Chris May
What are the first two names that come to mind on reading the phrase 'Thelonious Monk's saxophonist'? Chances are they will be John Coltrane or Charlie Rouse. The runner-up could be Sonny Rollins and somewhere further down the field might be Johnny Griffin. Griffin deserves to move up the list. The hard blowing, express velocity, R&B-schooled tenor player starting gigging with Monk in 1948. In 1955, he was the Monk quartet's saxophonist during a one-week residency in ...
Continue ReadingSolo Monk: A Poem By Steve Kowit
by AAJ Staff
One day back in the '60s, Monk was sitting at the piano, Charlie Mingus pulling at his coat how Monk should put the word in so the Mingus group could play the Five Spot, seeing as how Monk's already legendary gig down there was ending--Mingus all persuasion & cajolery, ran it down for twenty minutes till he capped it with the comment: ..."Dig it, Thelonious, you know we Black Brothers ...GOT to ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Celebrating 75 Years Of His First Recordings Revisited
by Chris May
Another stone resurrection from the Swiss-based ezz-thetics label, Celebrating 75 Years Of His First Recordings Revisited collects 23 of the tracks Thelonious Monk recorded for Blue Note between 1947 and 1952, remastered by ezzthetics' sonic jedi Michael Brändli at Hardstudios in Winterthur. Situated north of Zurich, Winterthur is Switzerland's equivalent of Silicon Valley and Hardstudios looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. The audio quality Brändli achieves there for ezz-thetics' has been raved about many times on these pages. ...
Continue ReadingArt Blakey's Jazz Messengers: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk (Deluxe Edition)
by Chris May
Rhino's new series of reissues of historic albums from the late 1950s/early 1960s hit the ground running in 2020 with John Coltrane's Giant Steps (Atlantic, 1960). Spring 2022 has already seen Charles Mingus' Trio (Jubilee, 1957) and Coltrane's My Favorite Things (Atlantic, 1961). Hot on their heels comes Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk (Alantic, 1958). Each reissue is a double disc. Disc one contains the original album. Disc two comprises outtakes, some previously ...
Continue ReadingMONK! Thelonious, Pannonica, and the Friendship Behind a Musical Revolution
by William H. Snyder
Introduction A butterfly met a monk in 1954. In the wake of an almost 30 year friendship they left behind some of the best music of the 20th century—Thelonious Monk the creator, Pannonica de Koenigswarter an enabler. The story of their friendship has been told before, but never quite in this way. Youssef Daoudi is the author-illustrator of a 2018 genre-bending historical graphic novel. If you know the story don't let it stop you from reading Daoudi's work; it is ...
Continue ReadingGot Live—Do You Want It?
by Patrick Burnette
Four live records turn up on the boys' plates—of which do they happily partake? The sessions range in recording dates from the late 1960's to the 2010's, but three of the four came out in the last few months. We talk about a listener-suggested album of “modern" stride piano, a scorching modal date that left the tape in tatters, a recently discovered live appearance from the dean of off-kilter piano and a series of charming duets by two musicians of ...
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