Thelonious Monk – Brilliant Corners - new 180gm LP sealed

Label: Ermitage (9VNL 12511 LP)
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Stereo
Country: Europe
Reissued: 2020

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.