Thelonious Monk: Thelonius Monk Quartet with John Coltrane - At Carnegie Hall : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

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This performance, on November 29th, 1957, was recorded for broadcast by Voice of America but never aired. The tapes were filed away with the barest labeling in the Library of Congress, where they sat, forgotten, until their accidental rediscovery this year. It was quite easy then to miss the explosive worth in this music. Pianist Thelonious Monk was an admired but widely misunderstood eccentric, a long walk from canonization; tenor saxophonist John Coltrane was still a sideman, two years away from transforming jazz harmony and improvisation on 1959's Giant Steps. What makes this set such a godsend, nearly fifty years late, is that we hear this brief legendary partnership at its best in a concert-hall setting, in stunning-for-its-day fidelity. Coltrane's future is evident in his high-speed solos in "Sweet and Lovely" and "Evidence"; he rolls around and through Monk's spiked chords and hairpin rolls with daredevil poise. But this is Monk's band and music, and Coltrane serves him with imagination and empathy -- his tenor breaths caressing Monk's piano like curls of smoke in "Crepuscule With Nellie"; the way the two egg each other on in sprinting solos, to a frantic climax in the first of two passes at "Epistrophy." It is incredible that such history has been lost for so long. Even more incredible: For these men, it was just another night on the bandstand.