Monk's Music

Among the most intense and fascinating recording sessions of Thelonious Monk's career, Monk's Music surrounds the pianist/composer with his early boss Coleman Hawkins, his ideal drummer Art Blakey, two younger musicians who had worked with him productively earlier in the Fifties (Ray Copeland and Gigi Gryce), and another pair that would soon make history as part of his legendary Five Spot quartet (John Coltrane and Wilbur Ware). The program includes early Monk classics and the thorny new Crepuscule with Nellie, extended blowing performances and a brief opening horn fanfare, the sum of which equals an album where even the rough edges confirm the combustible atmosphere generated when jazz's best worked under the direction of the music's supreme individualist.