50 great moments in jazz: The renaissance of Thelonious Monk

The high priest of improv's 1956 album Brilliant Corners is a remarkable insight into his wayward musical mindThe New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett once described Thelonious Monk's idiosyncratic timing and unexpected resolutions as feeling like "missing the bottom step in the dark". His pauses could be so prolonged, you'd wonder if he'd left the studio. John Coltrane observed that playing Monk's music could be so rhythmically and harmonically taxing that if you missed a chord change it felt lik...

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