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Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960
by Stefano Merighi
Ecco un'occasione in cui una recensione solitamente attacca con “riesumato tesoro musicale nascosto," “ritrovato scrigno sonoro inaspettato," e via di seguito. Invece sarà meglio chiedersi: ma come? Un quartetto di Thelonious Monk (più Barney Wilen ospite) incide dei pezzi per un film di Roger Vadim, alla luce del sole, non certo in incognito, e gli stessi restano in una scatola per 58 anni? E dov'erano dunque produttori, giornalisti, esperti, indifferenti alla pubblicazione di tali gemme? Oppure, più pacatamente: ...
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by C. Michael Bailey
Few things are as infused with as much romance as are those thought lost. Take the entire myth of blues singer Robert Johnson. He produced 29 shellac sides in the late 1920s that had immeasurable influence on American folk music after and then he disappeared. He did exist, but exists now only as a phantom, a heat apparition rising from a dusty dirt road in some God-forsaken Third-World corner of these United States. Yet his visage beckons like Ahab from ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960
by Mark Sullivan
Finding a lost movie soundtrack by composer/pianist Thelonious Monk at this late date seems an improbable event, at the very least. But that is what we have here: previously unreleased performances heard in Roger Vadim's famous 1959 French film Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The official soundtrack album released at the time included only the music by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with Barney Wilen that was also recorded for the film. Monk did not compose any new music for the ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960
by Dan McClenaghan
There's a purity and innocence in the music of pianist/composer Thelonious Monk. But a subtle complexity colored his tunes, masked by an enchanting approach-ability. You hear “Bemsha Swing," “Well You Needn't," “In Walked Bud," and the melodies won't leave your head; they soak into your neural circuitry, permanently. Monk emerged in the late forties with a series of 78 rpm discs collected into two volumes of The Genius of Modern Jazz (Blue Note Records, 1952). He recorded for ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960
by Mark Corroto
It's nearly impossible to underestimate the importance of the discovery of the tapes Thelonious Monk made for the French film Les Liasons Dangereuses 1960. Recorded in New York in July 1959, the session, although used in the film, was filed away for some 55 years. Recovered and remastered, we hear not only the soundtrack, but alternate takes and Monk rehearsing his band. Monk had never scored a soundtrack, but was convinced by the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter to ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960
by Nenad Georgievski
The magnitude of archival material in jazz music is enormous and overflowing as basements and attics are full with unreleased materials, outtakes and alternate versions by various artists. It's such a medium where recordings used to be made in a matter of few days. Over the years, most or some of that material has found its place on numerous deluxe or anniversary reissues or exclusive content for various box sets. It's a very rare occurrence when a material that was ...
Continue ReadingThings We Like: Thelonious Monk
by Libero Farnè
All'interno delle stagioni di Angelica a Bologna, è giunto alla decima edizione il ciclo di filmati “Voci dall'al di là." Curato da Walter Rovere, fin dall'origine ha avuto come logo l'emblematica immagine dell'incontro fra i sorridenti John Cage e Sun Ra. Nell'anno in cui si celebra il centenario della nascita di Thelonious Monk non poteva mancare un documentario su di lui: “American Composer" di Matthew Seig, edito nel 1991 ma, come sostengono gli organizzatori, presentato solo ora in prima italiana. ...
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