Thelonious Monk - The Classic Quartet

The Classic Quartet captures Thelonious Monk's working band in Tokyo in 1963, remastered and pressed on 180-gram vinyl.

These performances were taped for Japanese television during Monk's tour of the country that year, played without an audience and issued in various forms before finding a home at Candid. They shouldn't be confused with Monk in Tokyo, the concert album from the same trip. What you get here is the quartet in a studio-like setting, relaxed and focused: Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, Butch Warren on bass and Frankie Dunlop on drums, a lineup that knew Monk's tunes so well they could bend them at will.

"Epistrophy" opens with that lurching, unmistakable theme, the band locked in from the first bar. "Evidence" is all jagged stops and starts, with Dunlop relishing every odd accent, and "Just a Gigolo" offers a short, playful turn full of sly wit. The closing "Blue Monk" stretches past eleven minutes, an easy, rolling blues that shows how much fun this band had playing together.

Short on fuss and big on personality, this is Monk at his most approachable. It's a vivid snapshot of a great quartet near the end of its run, and the remastering lets every chord ring out clearly.