Brilliant Corners

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Brilliant Corners
Studio album by Thelonious Monk

Publication
(s)

April 1957

admission

October 9, 1956 , October 15, 1956 ,
December 7, 1956

Label (s) Riverside Records

Format (s)

LP , CD , SACD

Genre (s)

Hard bop

Title (number)

5

running time

42:47

occupation

production

Orrin Keepnews

Studio (s)

Reeves Sound Studio, New York City

chronology
Thelonious Monk / Sonny Rollins
(1956) 		Brilliant Corners Thelonious Himself
(1957)
Thelonious Monk (1947)

Brilliant Corners is a studio album by the American jazz pianist Thelonious Monk . It was his third album for Riverside Records and the first album for this label with his own compositions. The complex title track of the album took twenty-five takes in the studio and is considered one of the most difficult compositions by Thelonious Monk.

The album

The album was recorded in three sessions in late 1956 with two different quintets.

The tracks Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-Are and Pannonica , in which Thelonious Monk C elesta plays, were recorded on October 9, 1956 with saxophonists Ernie Henry and Sonny Rollins , bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Max Roach . The first composition was named after the phonetically exact rendering of "Blue Bolivar Blues" in the words of Thelonious Monk. The title refers to the Hotel Bolívar, in which Pannonica de Koenigswarter stayed ; Thelonious Monk had met her on his first trip to Europe in 1954.

On October 15, 1956, Monk tried to record the title track Brilliant Corners with the same band during a four-hour session. The complexity and unconventional song structure of the title track, which deviates from standard song and blues structures, became a challenge for Monks Sidemen , who recorded twenty-five takes, and led to great tension between Monk and Ernie Henry and Oscar Pettiford. Monk tried to make it easier for Henry by not playing during his alto saxophone solo. During one of the takes, producer Orrin Keepnews and others in the control room could not hear Oscar Pettiford play and checked his bass microphone for interference. Ultimately, they realized that Pettiford was just pretending to be playing. Without having a completely completed take of the title available, Keepnews put the album version of Brilliant Corners together from several different takes.

On December 7, 1956, Bemsha Swing was recorded with Paul Chambers on double bass and trumpeter Clark Terry , who replaced Ernie Henry. In addition, Monk recorded a solo piano version of I Surrender, Dear .

In 1979, jazz saxophonist Steve Lacy had the following to say about the album:

“They're fiendish, those pieces,… Once you start listening to them all, one after another, they start to reveal something. There isn't a key to understanding them but they're not so obscure and plain weird that they can't be understood ”

“They are diabolical, these pieces… As soon as you start listening to them all, one by one, they start to reveal something. There is no key to understanding them, but they are not so obscure and strange that they cannot be understood. "

The contributors

The musicians and their instruments

The production staff

  • Orrin Keepnews - producer
  • Jack Higgins - Recording Technique
  • Joe Tarantino - Mastering

Track list

With the exception of the marked exceptions, all compositions are by Thelonious Monk .

Page 1:

1. Brilliant Corners - 7:45 am
2. Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are - 13:07

Page 2:

3. Pannonica - 8:50
4. I Surrender, Dear (Harry Barris) - 5:27
5. Bemsha Swing (Thelonious Monk, Denzil Best ) - 7:40

reception

source rating
Allmusic
Jazzwise
The Penguin Guide to Jazz
Down beat

According to the trade magazine Down Beat , Brilliant Corners was the most critically acclaimed jazz album of 1957. Nat Hentoff , the magazine's editor, gave it five stars in his 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 Brilliant Corners, along with his live album Misterioso , released in 1959 , were Monk's artistic masterpieces. In his five-star review of the album, Lindsay Planer wrote for Allmusic that “perhaps it can be considered the alpha and omega of post-war American jazz. No serious jazz collection should be without the album. "Brian Morton and Richard Cook say the following about the album in 2011:" A staggering record, imperfect and patched together after the sessions, but one of the most vivid insights into Monk's music. "(German:" An amazing recording, imperfect and patched up after the sessions, but one of the most vivid glimpses of Monk's music. ")

In 2003, Brilliant Corners was one of fifty recordings selected by the Library of Congress that year for inclusion in the National Recording Registry . It can also be found in the reference work 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die . Because of its historical significance, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 .

The magazine Jazzwise chose Brilliant Corners at No. 6 of 100 Jazz Albums That Shook the World . In the selection of the 100 best jazz albums in the German-language edition of Rolling Stone magazine, it came in 16th.

literature

  • Kenny Mathieson, Giant Steps: Bebop And The Creators Of Modern Jazz, 1945–65. Canongate Books, 2012, ISBN 0-85786-617-6 .
  • Rob van der Bliek: Brilliant Corners and Riverside. In: The Thelonious Monk Reader. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001, ISBN 0-19-512166-X .
  • David H. Rosenthal: Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music. 1955-1965. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1993, ISBN 0-19-535899-6 .
  • Brian Morton, Richard Cook: The Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in the 1000 Best Albums. Penguin Books Ltd., Kindle version, 2011, ISBN 978-0-14-195900-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Kenny Mathieson: Giant Steps: Bebop And The Creators Of Modern Jazz, 1945-65 . Canongate Books, 2012, ISBN 0-85786-617-6 , pp. 176 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Brian Morton, Richard Cook: The Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in the 1000 Best Albums . Penguin Books, Kindle version, 2011, ISBN 978-0-14-195900-9 .
  3. ^ Kenny Mathieson: Giant Steps: Bebop And The Creators Of Modern Jazz, 1945-65 . Canongate Books, 2012, ISBN 0-85786-617-6 , pp. 177 .
  4. ↑ Review by Lindsay Planer on allmusic.com (accessed May 31, 2018)
  5. ↑ Review by Roy Carr on jazzwisemagazine.com (accessed May 31, 2018)
  6. ↑ Penguin Guide to Jazz: Core Collection List on tomhull.com (accessed May 31, 2018)
  7. ↑ a b Rob van der Bliek: Brilliant Corners and Riverside. The Thelonious Monk Reader . Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-19-512166-X , pp. 89 ( books.google.de ).
  8. ↑ Thelonius Monk: Brilliant Corners - 1957's most Praised LP . In: Down Beat . 24, numbers 21-26, Chicago, December 12, 1957.
  9. ^ David H. Rosenthal: Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music, 1955-1965 . Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-19-535899-6 , pp. 132 .
  10. ^ Robert Christgau : Not So Misterioso . In: The Barnes & Noble Review . December 13, 2009. Archived from the original on April 12, 2013. Retrieved on April 12, 2013.
  11. ↑ Lindsay Planner: Brilliant Corners - Thelonious Monk . Allmusic . Retrieved July 29, 2013.
  12. ↑ Brilliant Corners in the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame. Retrieved May 29, 2017 .
  13. ↑ The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World on jazzwisemagazine.com (accessed May 31, 2018)
  14. ↑ The 100 best jazz albums on rollingstone.de (accessed May 31, 2018)