Track Listing

1. Brilliant Corners
2. Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are
3. Pannonica
4. I Surrender, Dear
5. Bemsha Swing

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14620 in Music
• Released on: 1991-07-01
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Digitally remastered using K2 bit technology, this is a Japanese reissue of the great pianist's 1956 album for the Prestige label in a miniaturized LP sleeve limited to the initial pressing only. Five tracks. The All-Music Guide gave the album four & a ha

Amazon.com essential recording
Few composers or improvisers can match the originality of pianist Thelonious Monk. Quirky yet rigorously logical, Monk's playful but always purposeful choice of skewed melodies and interrupted rhythm patterns gave the bebop movement, and jazz in total, a new sound that was totally modern. Although he created a surprisingly limited body of compositions, his impact on the vocabulary and canon of jazz is second to none, including such prolific giants as Duke Ellington. Brilliant Corners is a triumph of both performance and conception: the two small-group sessions, anchored by Monk, drummer Max Roach, and the bass work of either Oscar Pettiford or Paul Chambers, feature superb front-line performances by saxophonists Sonny Rollins and the tragically under-recorded Ernie Henry, as well as trumpeter Clark Terry. The title track, which centers the collection, is one of Monk's most unconventional pieces, skirting whole-tone, chromatic and Lydian scales; a version of "Pannonica" finds Monk doubling on celeste, while the band stretches out on "Bemsha Swing" and the blues "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are." --Fred Goodman

Customer Reviews

Pannonica
From the wonderful documentary "Straight, No Chaser", we know that the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter was born a Rothschild, flew bombers during WWII in de Gaulle's resistance, then came to New York and became one of the foremost patrons of jazz, close friends with Parker, Thelonious, and countless others. Complex lady. Complex tune as well, and one of Monk's most beautiful.
This record was Monk's third for Riverside, but the first to feature his compositions. The title track "Brilliant Corners" is notorious for its strangeness of melody and its doubling of tempo. But the highlight of the record is the ballad "Pannonica", for two reasons... first, Monk doubling on the celeste. I think it must be the only time he ever played another instrument on record, let alone two instruments at once, but he must've been aiming for an ethereal quality for this recording and achieves it in his intro and in his solo, where he alternates between celeste and piano. And second... Sonny Rollins. This was made during Sonny's high point, around the time of "Saxophone Colossus", and I think it is probably his strongest ballad solo, and the strongest saxophone solo anyone has played behind Monk, past Rouse and Johnny Griffin and even Coltrane. As great as Rouse is, whenever he is playing the tune, you can hear him get caught up in the trickiness of the bridge, and he invariably runs back to the theme for safety. Sonny, during his solo, has truly possessed and internalized Monk's composition, and brings all of his astonshing self to the solo. Doesn't falter once. And listen towards the end when he throws in those five consecutive ascending glissandos. Then listen to Monk affectionately duplicate them when he gets into his solo. Then listen to some of the other recordings of "Pannonica" over the next 15 years and you'll hear Monk working this phrase in again. A small, wonderful exchange between two artists. The rest of the tunes on "Brilliant Corners" are great, but "Pannonica" is one of those rare ones that is itself worth the price of admission. One can only wish that Monk and Rollins had played and recorded more together-- then I think there would be no question of Monk's supremacy in modern jazz or of Sonny's supremacy on the tenor saxophone.

The best introduction to Monk
This is not the first Monk album I ever heard. When first learning about his work, I explored the Blue Note recordings. They are superb works in their own right; anyone who is serious about jazz must hear them. But I don't think they are representative of the man's brilliance. What Monk did while recording for Riverside was create his own musical universe. If you've never heard this album before you might be blown away by the off-kilter style. It's not bop, it's not cool jazz, it's not even hard bop. You will know after hearing this record if Monk is an artist worth pursuing for your collection, and if you're like me, you'll probably want to get your hands on everything he recorded for Riverside.

Brilliance is just one of its attributes
Brilliant Corners is remarkable for bringing together musicians who had established themselves as major jazzmen in their own right and yet gave everything on this date to make an album that from the outset would reflect Monk's peculiar musical world. Perhaps it is Monk's most enduring masterpiece.

The title piece is one of the single major works in the jazz canon. It proved so difficult to play that 25 separate cuts had to be spliced together to produce the final piece. Sonny Rollins was the tenor saxophonist on the date and leading guest musician. As a teenager, Rollins had rehearsed alongside Monk. His contribution to "Brilliant Corners" was devastating: he acquired a feel for the unusual structure of the piece -abrupt changes of tempo, bombast followed by bathos, sudden diabolical runs, jumps into double time- and became Monk's voice through a horn, while retaining the unmistakeable Rollins attack. And all this drama was held together by the polyrhythmic adaptability of Max Roach, who had played so magnificently with Rollins a few months earlier on Saxophone Colossus.

The rest of the album contains the eccentric blues "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are" (which appears on numerous early 1960s discs, including Monk's Dream, Columbia, 1962), the first recording of "Pannonica", written for the wealthy jazz-lover Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter, in whose New York apartment Charlie Parker had died the year before, "Bemsha Swing", first recorded by Monk in 1952 and on this occasion featuring Duke Ellington's chief trumpeter Clark Terry, and a solo reading of "I Surrender, Dear". This is an essential modern jazz album.