| Brilliant Corners | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | April 4, 1957 | |||
| Recorded | October 9, October 15, and December 7, 1956 | |||
| Genre | Hard bop | |||
| Length | 42:47 | |||
| Label | Riverside | |||
| Producer | Orrin Keepnews | |||
| Thelonious Monk chronology | ||||
| ||||
Brilliant Corners is a 1957 studio album by American jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. It was his third album for Riverside Records, and his first on the label to include his own compositions. [1]
Brilliant Corners was recorded across three sessions in October and December 1956 with two different quintets. "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-Are" and "Pannonica", the latter featuring Monk playing celesta, were recorded on October 9 with saxophonists Ernie Henry and Sonny Rollins, bassist Oscar Pettiford, and drummer Max Roach. The former composition was titled as a phonetic rendering of Monk's exaggerated pronunciation of "Blue Bolivar Blues"; this referred to the Bolivar Hotel in Manhattan, where heiress and jazz patron Pannonica de Koenigswarter resided. [1]
On October 15, Monk attempted to record the title track with the same band during a four-hour session. The complexity of the composition became a challenge for the band, who attempted twenty-five takes, and Henry and Pettiford became upset with Monk. Monk tried to make the recording easier for Henry by not playing during his solo. [1] During one of the takes, producer Orrin Keepnews and others in the control room could not hear Pettiford's playing; they checked the microphone on his bass to see if it was broken, but ultimately realized that he was pantomiming. [2] As no single take was completed, Keepnews edited the album version together from multiple takes. [1]
"Bemsha Swing" was recorded on December 7, with Paul Chambers replacing Pettiford on bass and trumpeter Clark Terry replacing Henry; Monk recorded a solo piano version of "I Surrender Dear" on the same day. [1]
The title track has an unconventional structure that deviates from both standard song form and blues structures. Its ternary form employs an eight-bar A section followed by a seven-bar B section and a modified seven-bar A section, and features a double-time theme in each second chorus and complex rhythmic accents. [1]
"Bemsha Swing" was the only composition on the album that Monk had previously recorded.[ citation needed ]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Disc |  [3] |
| Encyclopedia of Popular Music |  [4] |
| Tom Hull | A [5] |
| Jazzwise | [6] |
| The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings | [7] |
According to Down Beat magazine, Brilliant Corners was the most critically acclaimed jazz album of 1957. [8] Nat Hentoff, the magazine's editor, gave it five stars in a contemporary review and called it "Riverside's most important modern jazz LP to date." [9] Jazz writer David H. Rosenthal later called it a "classic" hard bop session. [10] Music critic Robert Christgau said that, along with his 1958 live album Misterioso , Brilliant Corners represented Monk's artistic peak. [11]
In his five-star retrospective review of the album, Allmusic's Lindsay Planer wrote that it "may well be considered the alpha and omega of post-World War II American jazz. No serious jazz collection should be without it." [12] The Penguin Guide to Jazz included the album in its “core collection” of essential recordings. [7]
In 2003, Brilliant Corners was one of fifty recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. It has also been included in the reference book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die , with reviewer Andrew Gilbert saying that it "marked Monk's return as composer of the first order." [13] The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. [14]
All tracks written by Thelonious Monk, except where noted.
1957 LP Mono Release (US, RLP 12-226)
1985 CD Mono Remastered Release (Japan, VDJ-1526). Track numbers in brackets.
Side One
Side Two
Musicians
Production
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser", "Ruby, My Dear", "In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't". Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington.
Oscar Pettiford was an American jazz double bassist and composer. He was one of the earliest musicians to work in the bebop idiom.
Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica 'Nica' de Koenigswarter was a British-born jazz patron and writer. A leading patron of bebop, she was a member of the Rothschild family.
Monk's Music is a jazz album by the Thelonious Monk Septet, which for this recording included Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane. It was released in November 1957 through Riverside Records. The recording was made in New York City on June 26, 1957.
Monk's Dream is an album by jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, released by Columbia Records in March 1963. It was Monk's first album for Columbia following his five-year recording period with Riverside Records.
Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, also known as Thelonious Monk Plays the Music of Duke Ellington, is an album by American jazz pianist Thelonious Monk which was recorded in July 1955 and released on Riverside later that year. The album contains Monk's versions of songs by Duke Ellington.
Misterioso is a 1958 live album by American jazz ensemble the Thelonious Monk Quartet. By the time of its recording, the pianist and bandleader Thelonious Monk had overcome an extended period of career difficulties and achieved stardom with his residency at New York's Five Spot Café, beginning in 1957. He returned there the following year for a second stint with his quartet, featuring drummer Roy Haynes, bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin. Along with Thelonious in Action (1958), Misterioso captures portions of the ensemble's August 7 show at the venue.
Ernie Henry was an American jazz saxophonist.
Nica's Tempo is the most common latter-day title of an album by the Gigi Gryce Orchestra and Quartet, recorded and first released in late 1955.
Misterioso is an album by American jazz drummer-composer Paul Motian, his ninth album overall and third on the Italian Soul Note label. It was released in 1987 and features performances by Motian’s quintet with guitarist Bill Frisell, tenor saxophonists Joe Lovano and Jim Pepper, and bassist Ed Schuller.
Live at the Jazz Workshop is a live album by jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, that was recorded at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. The album was recorded on November 3 and 4, 1964, and released by Columbia Records in 1982.
Monk in Tokyo is a live album recorded in 1963 and first released in Japan by Columbia Records as two separate LPs in 1963, then in edited form as a single LP in 1969 by CBS/Sony Records and reissued in complete form as a double LP in 1973, featuring several original Monk compositions, as well as jazz standards.
Thelonious Himself is a studio album by Thelonious Monk released in 1957 by Riverside Records. It was Monk's fourth album for the label. The album features Monk playing solo piano, except for the final track, "Monk's Mood", which features John Coltrane on tenor saxophone and Wilbur Ware on bass. It was Monk's second solo piano studio album, and it was the first made by an American label and distributed in the United States.
Thelonious Monk Trio is an album by American jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk. The album features his earliest recordings for Prestige Records, performing as a soloist with a rhythm section of bassist Gary Mapp, either Art Blakey or Max Roach on drums, and one track with Percy Heath replacing Mapp. It also contains the earliest recorded versions of the jazz standards "Blue Monk" and "Bemsha Swing".
Last Chorus is a posthumous album by American jazz saxophonist Ernie Henry featuring tracks recorded in 1956 and 1957 for the Riverside label.
Thelonious Monk in Italy is a live album by American jazz pianist Thelonious Monk featuring tracks recorded in Italy in 1961 and released on the Riverside label in 1963.
Thelonious Monk: The Complete Riverside Recordings is a comprehensive compilation of the recordings made by Thelonious Monk for Riverside Records between 21 July 1955 and 21 April 1961. It was released by Riverside in 1986 on 22 LPs or on 15 CDs. It contains all the tracks previously released both on the original and on the later expanded CD versions of all his Riverside albums, together with some tracks never previously released.
Monk's Casino is a live album by German free jazz pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach featuring the complete compositions of Thelonious Monk recorded in Germany in 2003-04 for the Intakt label. According to the liner notes by critic John Corbett, Monk's Casino is the first ever comprehensive recording project to include all Monk's songs.
Monk's Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk is a 6CD box set by jazz pianist Frank Kimbrough that was released by the Sunnyside label in 2018. The set features 70 compositions by Thelonious Monk.
