Thelonious Monk Sonny Rollins Brilliant Corners LP RE 1963 Essencial Jazz

Description: Thelonious Monk Sonny Rollins Brilliant Corners LP RE 1963 Essencial Jazz My Favorite Monk recording great playing and Monk is in rare crazy form.....Yes Recorded at Reeves Sound Studios, New York City; October 9 (A2, B1), October 15 (A1) and December 7 (B2, B3), 1956. Blue/silver labels with mic & reels & deep groove. "BILL GRAUER PRODUCTIONS, Inc."Catalog # on back cover is 226. Brilliant Corners is a 1957 studio album by American jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. It was his third album for Riverside Records, and his first on the label to include his own compositions. Brilliant Corners was recorded across three sessions in October and December 1956 with two different quintets. "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-Are" and "Pannonica", the latter featuring Monk playing celesta, were recorded on October 9 with saxophonists Ernie Henry and Sonny Rollins, bassist Oscar Pettiford, and drummer Max Roach. The former composition was titled as a phonetic rendering of Monk's exaggerated pronunciation of "Blue Bolivar Blues"; this referred to the Bolivar Hotel in Manhattan, where heiress and jazz patron Pannonica de Koenigswarter resided.On October 15, Monk attempted to record the title track with the same band during a four-hour session. The complexity of the composition became a challenge for the band, who attempted twenty-five takes, and Henry and Pettiford became upset with Monk. Monk tried to make the recording easier for Henry by not playing during his solo. During one of the takes, producer Orrin Keepnews and others in the control room could not hear Pettiford's playing; they checked the microphone on his bass to see if it was broken, but ultimately realized that he was pantomiming. As no single take was completed, Keepnews edited the album version together from multiple takes."Bemsha Swing" was recorded on December 7, with Paul Chambers replacing Pettiford on bass and trumpeter Clark Terry replacing Henry; Monk recorded a solo piano version of "I Surrender Dear" on the same day.According to Down Beat magazine, Brilliant Corners was the most critically acclaimed jazz album of 1957. Nat Hentoff, the magazine's editor, gave it five stars in a contemporary review and called it "Riverside's most important modern jazz LP to date." Jazz writer David H. Rosenthal later called it a "classic" hard bop session. Music critic Robert Christgau said that, along with his 1958 live album Misterioso, Brilliant Corners represented Monk's artistic peak.In his five-star retrospective review of the album, Allmusic's Lindsay Planer wrote that it "may well be considered the alpha and omega of post-World War II American jazz. No serious jazz collection should be without it." The Penguin Guide to Jazzincluded the album in its “core collection” of essential recordings.The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999Although Brilliant Corners is Thelonious Monk's third disc for Riverside, it's the first on the label to weigh in with such heavy original material. Enthusiasts who become jaded to the idiosyncratic nature of Monk's playing or his practically arithmetical chord progressions should occasionally revisit Brilliant Corners. There is an inescapable freshness and vitality saturated into every measure of every song. The passage of time makes it all the more difficult to imagine any other musicians bearing the capacity to support Monk with such ironic precision. The assembled quartet for the lion's share of the sessions included Max Roach (percussion), Sonny Rollins (tenor sax), Oscar Pettiford (bass), and Ernie Henry (alto sax). Although a compromise, the selection of Miles Davis' bassist, Paul Chambers, and Clark Terry (trumpet) on "Bemsha Swing" reveals what might be considered an accident of ecstasy, as they provide a timeless balance between support and being able to further the cause musically. Likewise, Roach's timpani interjections supply an off-balanced sonic surrealism while progressing the rhythm in and out of the holes provided by Monk's jackrabbit leads. It's easy to write Monk's ferocity and Forrest Gump-esque ingenuity off as gimmick or quirkiness. What cannot be dismissed is Monk's ability to translate emotions into the language of music, as in the freedom and abandon he allows through Sonny Rollins' and Max Roach's mesmerizing solos in "Brilliant Corners." The childlike innocence evoked by Monk's incorporation of the celeste during the achingly beautiful ode "Pannonica" raises the emotional bar several degrees. Perhaps more pointed, however, is the impassioned "I Surrender, Dear" -- the only solo performance on the album. Brilliant Corners may well be considered the alpha and omega of post-World War II American jazz. No serious jazz collection should be without it.

Price: 179.99 USD

Location: Portland, Oregon

End Time: 2024-11-11T21:18:08.000Z

Shipping Cost: 4.63 USD