Few have doubted that African American pianist/composer Thelonious Monk was a genius of modern music, as this album title attests, but the acclaimed 28-year-old Birmingham-born saxophonist Xhosa Cole catches Monk’s wild spirit as well as the legacy of his great compositions.
Ever since Monk’s emergence among the midnight-jamming subversives of jazz’s revolutionary early-1940s bebop movement, his rhythmically jagged, melodically circuitous music was revered – and even feared – by improvisers. His playing would ascend, only to suddenly stop with a crash or jump a sudden chasm; he would lay harmonic booby-traps that invited escapes in shambling melodic runs. Even the great John Coltrane described missing a Monk chord change as like falling into an empty elevator shaft. But Cole will surprise even the most devout buffs, and hook the most unsuspecting of jazz newbies too.
