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Nikki Yeoh, composer, jazz pianist and educator
“Trinkle, Tinkle”
In the ’90s I was watching TV. An inventor was revealing their latest creation: a suit jacket that could record movement. The clever blazer would “remember” the motions and make the “model” involuntarily move in the same way. My mind wandered — what if you could do this with gloves? How would it feel to experience how Oscar Peterson, Bach or Monk moved across the piano? “Trinkle, Tinkle” is the invisible memory glove and almost the answer to my glove-desiring prayers. So ergonomically written, pianistic in its approach. It embodies ballet finesse, angular jazz-tap punchy stabs, a percussive African ancestral message and a portal into Monk’s movement and mind.
I love the 2/4 bar at the end of the A section. The “extra” two beats remind me of when Monk thought the music was “cookin’” and would jump up and dance, a stumbling, twisty-turning dance like a soccer player dribbling the ball, with the utmost grace and purpose, the phrase landing being the “goal.” As with many Monk tunes, this piece is best heard and improvised to, while singing the melody. Just remember to substitute the 2/4 bar with a 4/4 bar in solos. Monk sticks closely to the melody on the original recording. Joshua Redman’s version on his self-titled album is excellent, albeit without piano. In my dreams they called me for that album, but I couldn’t go as my gloves weren’t ready!
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Morgan Rhodes, music supervisor
“Let’s Cool One”
Discovering “Let’s Cool One” was a complete love-at-first-listen experience. Having only heard “Solo Monk” before hearing this record, my introduction to big-band Thelonious was an awakening. While I’ll always appreciate the intimacy of the live recording on “Misterioso,” there’s something so compelling to me about the “Monk’s Blues” version. Oliver Nelson’s arrangement takes it to dramatic new levels. The upbeat tempo makes the song feel bigger and elegant, giving brass every opportunity to shine while marrying Thelonious’s well-known dissonance with traditional harmonies. The result sounds like a really good conversation between horns and piano — a call and response that holds space for both the avant-garde and the conventional. Monk’s playing is masterful on this one.
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Anna Butterss, musician
“Sweet and Lovely”
I love Monk’s own compositions, but there is something exciting about hearing his interpretations of jazz standards. Monk tinkers with these songs, reconstructing harmony and melody alike until he might as well have written them in the first place. “Sweet and Lovely” is one of these standards that Monk revisited throughout his career — when he recorded this solo performance in 1964, he had been playing the song for over 10 years, and had made some characteristic tweaks to the original. The descending sevenths underlying the melody are classic Monk, as is his refusal to resolve the final chord to where we would expect. The lyrics of “Sweet and Lovely” (which we don’t hear, here) speak of a love with seemingly no complications: “Sweet and lovely, sweeter than the roses in May, and he loves me, there is nothing more I can say.”
In contrast to this tone, Monk creates a more melancholy vignette. We first hear him play the melody in a lush, almost stylized, romantic manner, leaning into the warmth of his left hand, but the heavy descent of the bass line adds an uneasiness to the mood. Throughout his brief solo his articulation becomes more pronounced, until the melody returns in insistent, rolling octaves. Monk’s ending doesn’t quite seem to wrap things up neatly — leaving the listener slightly unsatisfied, and perhaps keeping the door open for him to return to this song once again.
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Mary Halvorson, musician
“Crepuscule With Nellie”
Thelonious Monk was one of the first jazz musicians I listened to (on an album called “The Composer,” in the form of a cassette tape) as a preteen. At first I didn’t understand it at all, and the improvisations were totally lost on me, but somehow I kept coming back to that tape. What drew me in initially were the melodies. There is a version of “Crepuscule With Nellie” on that album. It’s classic Monk, instantly identifiable. There is so much beauty and strength of melodicism, with rhythmic quirks and whimsy integrated seamlessly, like the most natural thing in the world. You can feel Monk isn’t trying to do anything tricky; he’s just being himself. Underneath the wonderfully twisted logic, it’s still a melody you can sing along to. And once you learn Monk’s melodies, the improvisations unfold from there and enhance everything.