Thelonious Monk - Live in Rotterdam 1967 [Sapphire Edition]

Características

When he took the stage at the Club Doelen in Rotterdam on 28 October 1967, Thelonious Monk had just turned 50. Fifteen years later he would disappear from the music scene, taking refuge for the last six years of his life in New York at Pannonica de Koenigswater, never to touch the piano again. Flanked by the two "classics" "Ruby, My Dear" and "Blue Monk", he leads the quartet of his three accomplices, Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, Ben Riley and their guests, for more than an hour and 20 minutes. Larry Gales' bass pops out of a box at the end of "Hackensack", the brass gets carried away in the middle of "We See"; they answer each other by swirling in the dizzying "Oska". And in the middle of the concert, a solo moment on 'Don't Blame Me': everything appears contrasting, twisted, oblique, each note seeming to be surprised by the previous one. Monk first goes around the melody from behind before bringing it back, pure, to the front. Finally they close: "Blue Monk", all classical restraint.“ “Jazz Mania” writes: “This 1967 recording sounds as if it had been recorded yesterday and gives us a great Monk surrounded by real stars such as Clark Terry and Johnny Griffin”
Frédéric D’Oria-Nicolas, the musical treasure hunter behind The Lost Recordings, describes the path the label had to take to make this release a reality as follows: “My first memory of Monk was as a teenager. His language and this way of understanding the piano, so far from what I appreciated at the time, seemed then totally foreign to me. Just like Bartok's music was to me. Years later, it was a revelation: the music seemed to me totally innovative. The harmonies and melodies that overlap and collide can be listened as the way to look at a Kandinsky or a Pollock. This previously unreleased concert, discovered in the Dutch archives, is a true Master painting that no one had ever had the chance to contemplate.”
“The Lost Recordings” is celebrated worldwide for preserving invaluable musical heritage and for the unsurpassed quality of its Phoenix Mastering™ restorations and is now releasing this legendary concert for the first time in absolute reference quality: The “Sapphire Edition” comes as a double LP (33 RPM), with 200-gram transparent Ultimate Record® vinyl. The hand-numbered edition is strictly limited to 4,000 copies, and the luxurious box set includes a 16-bit download card for the album. Sound wizard Kevin Gray himself is responsible for the lacquer cuts.
MUSICIANS
Thelonius Monk (piano)Charlie Rouse (tenor saxophone)Larry Gales (bass)Ben Riley (drums)Clark Terry (trumpet)Ray Copeland (trumpet)Jimmy Cleveland (trombone)Phil Woods (alto saxophone)Johnny Griffin (tenor saxophone)
LP 1
Side A1.    Ruby, My Dear 2.    Hackensack
Side B 3.    We See 4.    Epistrophy 
LP 2
Side C5.    Evidence / Epistrophy 6.    Don’t Blame Me
Side D 7.    Oska T. / Epistrophy8.    Blue Monk