(Oddly enough, I think that's part of why Monk is probably the most-played jazz composer today.)īoss Lady: It's not a melody or a bass line that tugs at the heart, and it's not especially uplifting. His tunes were often just frameworks for working out ideas. Monk wrote some awfully beautiful music which is more outright pleasing, but here is different. Me: It's not necessarily friendly at first, you're right. So I can see how there's a barrier for people getting into this music. But at the same time, it's about them and it's not about you. They're compelling because it seems really to mean something to both of them, and you kind of want to know what they're talking about. They embellish to the point in which it's a conversation rather than a melody statement.īoss Lady: It's sort of like seeing two people at the end of the bar in an intense dialogue. Monk has written out this simple figure for the vibes. To me it sounds like an active, living, mostly unscripted conversation between the piano and vibraphone. But they still surprise me every time.īoss Lady: I guess I'm coming to this music with few preconceptions, so it's hard to tell when something sounds strange. Then do something totally unexpected, like play a descending run really-really fast.Īfter years of listening to this stuff, I recognize so many Monk-isms. Monk will play this figure, pause, play something like the same figure, pause. Like, who writes like that? Who solos like that?īoss Lady: What makes the solo sound unusual to you? See, the thing about Monk to me is that it never stops sounding mysterious and new and mind-blowing. I'd like to hear what your visceral reaction is to this music. Me: Ah! But what is the actual focus? It's almost as much about the interplay than any sort of conventionally tuneful "melody" - not that Monk didn't write beautiful melodies too.Īnyway, here's another question: how does the idiosyncratic nature of the melody relate to the vibraphone solo? does it? what about Monk's piano solo?īoss Lady: Hey PJ, you're too young to be a professor! Lighten up. Listen closely at :7 seconds in - that's actually the melody.Ĭall that a melody if you will - but Monk insists on making that work.īoss Lady: I guess the vibes sound so diffuse next to the piano line that they sound more like a bee buzzing around a bear than the actual focus. That "obsessive opening figure" is actually just the bass line. I hear a strong, insistent personality in the music. Recorded in Barcelona at the Barcelona Só studio, October 11 & 21, 1996.Boss Lady: Here's what I hear: an obsessive opening figure that gets more and more intense until it finally lets go and begins to breathe. Tenor Saxophone – Jon Robles (tracks: 3, 4 & 9), Víctor De Diego For Monk fans or for those seeking the higher echelon of younger players, this one's for you. This is a fine album with many surprises along the way. By using the bass as an instrument that bridges harmonics rather than just as a rhythm instrument - there is a trio of saxophonists and a trombonist - he accomplishes the very thing Monk himself did on the piano, which was marry melody and harmony to rhythm as an inseparable musical effect. His radical reharmonizing of Monk's tunes is far more in keeping with the spirit of the composer than virtually any straight reading of them in memory. He controls tensions, tempos, and intervals. He conducts like Mingus from the bass chair and allows nothing to slip past his ear. With classics like "Bye-Ya," "Brilliant Corners," "Ruby, My Dear," "Straight, No Chaser," "In Walked Bud," and "Bemsha Swing" in the mix - all of which have been murdered by countless jazzmen attempting to realize Monk's genius - are more obscure gems like "Boo Boo's Birthday," "Trinckle Trinckle," and "Ask Me Now." What makes the set work so well is Mengual's iron hand on the proceedings. Boo Boo's Birthdayīassist David Mengual's ballsy tribute to Thelonious Monk is quite remarkable in that there are no easy marks on the arrangements, no Monk clichés in the reharmonization of the tunes, and the set is performed without a pianist. Скачать с: turbobit/gigapeta/rapidgator/katfile 1. Название альбома: Monkiana: Tribute to Thelonious Monk