14. Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane

The archival discovery of the year is also one of the most important live jazz recordings ever released: two 1957 sets by Monk's short-lived quartet with a young, still-searching Coltrane, taped for broadcast but never aired and filed away, all too well, for the next forty-eight years. Coltrane was just a saxophone sideman that night, but the force and harmonic imagination that bloomed on Giant Steps and A Love Supreme are in vivid evidence. A particular highlight: master pianist Monk and his apprentice magician challenging each other like equals in a frenzied swap of solos in the first-set take of "Epistrophy."

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