Overlooked at the time, following a handful of sessions on Blue Note which marked his debut as a leader, between 1952 and 1954 the pianist Thelonious Monk cut a series of records for Prestige, some of the earliest and greatest of which were collected under the title Thelonious Monk Trio. Intense, improvisational, and virtuosic as Monk played accompanied by the bassist Gary Mapp and drummers Art Blakey and Max Roach, who variously made up a nuanced yet understated rhythm section, these records bore the earliest versions of jazz standards like ‘Blue Monk’ and ‘Bemsha Swing’, despite being produced on a tinny piano under the strictures of the pioneering audio engineer Rudy Van Gelder. Renowned for his fastidiousness as an engineer, and for his cultivation of innovative techniques such as close miking, peak limiting, and tape saturation while critiqued for a perceived overuse of compression and reverb, Van Gelder’s fledgling studio in Hackensack after moving out of his parents’ living room would later yield Workin’ and Steamin’ by Miles Davis plus the solo debuts of Hank Mobley and Johnny Griffin.
This week with Reflections 1952, the trio of Frank Carlberg on piano, John Hébert on bass, and Francisco Mela on drums engage in a conversation with the Prestige recordings of Thelonious Monk, on an album billed as a note of thanks to the old master. Between ‘Nicknames’ which interpolates ‘Little Rootie Tootie’ while boasting the various monikers journalists gave to Monk and ‘Reflecting Reflections’ which features various quotes about Monk gathered from his fellow musicians, on ‘Bemsha Cubano’ it is the percussionist Francisco Mela who handles the microphone, adding Latin spirit to the reworking of a track which was co-written by Denzil Best and inspired by his family’s roots in Barbados.
Conceiving endless fields of airy and mutable blues, James Brandon Lewis unveils the latest single from his upcoming album Eye Of I with an elliptical sax motif alongside Max Jaffe on drums Chris Hoffman on cello. The saxophonist also features as part of an all-star cast on Watermelancholia by the multi-instrumentalist Devin Brahja Waldman, whose swirls of spiritual jazz channelled by the lush voice of Janice Lowe on the title track figure early Art Ensemble of Chicago and the tempering spirit of Max Roach amid the cut and thrust of the We Insist! era. Another stellar troupe lingers with Cory Smythe as if under a shroud, as puffs of wood and string pour out of the still-smouldering ruins of a piano, with four ensemble songs and a seven-part segue excavating the heartache and stinging plight of the show standard ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach. The likes of Sofia Jernberg, Joshua Modney, and Tomeka Reid all play their part on an album dedicated to the memory of the late saxophonist Ryan Muncy.
The rigorously de-trained cellist Lori Goldston and boundary-stretching trumpeter Greg Kelley share the first piece from All Points Leaning In. The Danish vibraphonist Martin Fabricius strives for an imaginary landscape somewhere between Scandinavian tones and the American blues, on a new musical journey with his decade-long companions Andreas Markus and Jacob Hatholt. For Editions Mego, the musician and filmmaker Tujiko Noriko labours in crepuscule from Vineuil Saint Firmin, while Melvin Gibbs cements a longtime friendship with the acclaimed video artist and cinematographer Arthur Jafa through the plunging and pummelling of his amber-hued, ultra-dense, bass-led sonics. From Kochi the multi-hyphenate Seljuk Rustum erects Cardboard Castles as a series of freely-improvised first takes, as tracks Francesca Heart, Jordan Reyes, and Mike Gangloff complete the latest roundup of best new music.
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Lori Goldston & Greg Kelley – ‘All Points Leaning In’
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Francesca Heart – ‘Giochi, Dispetti, lo Sguardo della Ninfa’
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Frank Carlberg Trio – ‘Bemsha Cubano’
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Martin Fabricius Trio – ‘Two of a Kind’
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Melvin Gibbs – ‘Inner Chamber’
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Mike Gangloff – ‘The Colors of Her Hair’
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Tujiko Noriko – ‘Fossil Words’
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