Cool article about recent Monk tribute...

[Jim Alfredson]

Didn't know if anyone had seen this yet: http://www.slate.com/id/2213230/

[EKE BBB]

From Doug Ramsey's Rifftides blog.

[king ubu]

That's a good read indeed - thanks for posting!

The Moran from Banlieues Bleues was on French radio a few days ago but the announcer kept talking over the music, very annoying - certainly a great show to catch live!

Somehow though I mostly started losing interest in Moran a few years ago... and that statement about "Modernistic" being the greatest piano solo recording of the past 20 years, I really don't know about that... there's plenty of Cecil Taylor (Willisau Concert stands out), and there's for instance Irene Schweizer's terrific "Chicago Piano Solo", but my pick might be this one (how fitting to post this after a post of our stride loving EKE BBB!):

[EKE BBB]

(...) but my pick might be this one (how fitting to post this after a post of our stride loving EKE BBB!):

Agreed! Hodes is a true master that should deserve wider recognition.

Regards,

A

[AllenLowe]

Moran is one of those really good musicians whose music just does not get to me - just reading the Slate article, thanks, Jim - one thing I will say about the original recordings, much as I admire both Overton and Monk, I never felt that those arrangements, or the original concert as released, were really distinctive enough to compel me to listen regularly - some very long solos which did not really address the music, great players but not really as deeply in the spirit of the music as I would have liked -

very good Phil Woods, however, before he turned into a saxophone machine -

about Hodes - I was lucky enough to hear him at Hanratty's years ago in NYC, solo. Nice man, great pianist whose recording don't really do him full justice, There was something about his touch and phrasing which, old fashioned but DEEP as they were, don't translate well. I always thought that the fact that the Lincoln Center crew never recognized him while he was around was proof positive of their stupidity and racialist ideology - here was maybe the last of the prime sources for the music, and he was all but invisible in his last years. Tired of that level of ignorance -

about that Slate article, too, should mention that he is very wrong about Bird disciples NOT playing Bird tunes. Many did nothing but - also, interesting how, like more than a few other critics, while describing the uniqueness of Monk, he fails to mention the single thing that set Monk apart - his rhythm -

also, Monk was more likely to have some variation of Asperger’s/Autism than bi-polar disease, as Kaplan suggests; his symptoms match a great deal of the current diagnosis –

Edited March 11, 2009 by AllenLowe