Jazz Music Thread

Well done! I enjoy it a lot too. Great musicians on it too.

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My favourite album: Brilliant Corners by Thelonious Monk

Guardian and Observer writer John Fordham examines the brilliant corners of Thelonious Monk.

Published: Tue 30 August 2011

When I was discovering jazz as a student, Thelonious Monk seemed to epitomise the artistic originality, indifference to rules and guileless eccentricity (he liked weird hats, and was given to shuffling dances onstage) that I loved about the music. Monk’s piano solos clanged with dissonance, bumped along in hopping runs or glowered with baleful silences, and his astonishing compositions (now recognised as modern musical landmarks, regardless of genre) had a strange, inelegant beauty that brusquely reinvented what melody, harmony and rhythm could mean.

Brilliant Corners, recorded for the Riverside label in 1956 with an A-list band including saxophonist Sonny Rollins and former Charlie Parker drummer Max Roach, was the most compositionally ambitious session in the former church pianist’s decade-long jazz career thus far. In a legendarily fractious session, the title track’s growling theme was so treacherous in its lurching phrasing and abrupt time changes that a band this good still spent 25 takes on it, and the final version was only possible by splicing two takes together. But Brilliant Corners was no calculated technical highwire act, but a piece of audaciously adventurous composing that has never lost its power to startle and seduce over the decades.

From Monk’s opening stabbed chords (as if he were chipping rock) to the bone-shaking notes, guttural horn harmonies and sudden thematic gallops, Brilliant Corners is gripping – as are the composer’s jangling improvisations, and Rollins’s lazily unfolding and huge-toned tenor solo. The session’s full of captivating variety too – from the urban graininess of Hornin’ In to the relaxed groove of Let’s Cool One, the surreal mix of Monk’s chordal bluntness and the coyness of a glockenspiel on Pannonica to the bleary rootsiness of the wonderful blues Ba Lue Bolivar Ba Lues Are. Arriving just before the late-50s free-jazz upheavals of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor, this was music that showed just how powerfully song-form harmonies and the tempered scale could be wrenched into new shapes.

Dave

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Great pianist with a fantastic band including Sam Rivers.

A live classic.

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Hey, if anyone wants to hear Glasper at his best, check this track out.

(I never did rate Clive Davis anyway. Nor did Teo Macero).

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Sure it was your toe? :grin:
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Or a plum?

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I pointed out in an earlier post that in terms of reviews Collagically Speaking appears well recieved.
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Yes, it’s not a very good album, but has a couple of good tracks.

(The track I like best is Change of Tone.

And on the recent live album How Much a Dollar Cost is very good.)

It’s too lounge, a bit cheesy, but the actual mixture of sounds and rhythms they produce is interesting.

The Glasper Experiment’s cover of Monk’s Think of One is brilliant.

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Not heard it but will see if I can stream it (Collagically Speaking) and see what I think
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If you’ve got half an hour to spare, there’s always this masterpiece!! :grinning:

Paul Who ? :joy::joy::joy::joy:

Bley Bley Blah Blah Blah… :grinning:

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I just discovered that Paul Blah Blah was the first to use Moog Synthetizers in jazz. I thought it was Zawinul or Corea, but not.

Yuko Mabuchi Trio

I’ve had the Volume 1 album for quite some time, now Volume 2 as well.

Both are highly recommended, play at 45rpm

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Paul Bley was an early adopter but not sure your comment is strictly true…

Dave

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I read on Wikipedia for Paul Bley. Apparently not accurate.

No disrespect but that is often the case. Often Wikipedia seems to be the first port of call for online information despite other available sources.

Dave

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I read it quickly, no mention of Paul Bley.

I tried to look at credits of some late 60’s albums on Discogs, but it’s written generally « electric piano », no moog, Wurlitzer, Fender Rhodes…etc

However are you sure your source is more reliable ? Without disrespect :laughing: