Home » Jazz Articles

Jazz Articles

Our daily articles are carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our future articles page. Read our daily album reviews.

Sign in to customize your My Articles page —or— Filter Article Results

10
Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Read "Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Few things are as infused with as much romance as are those thought lost. Take the entire myth of blues singer Robert Johnson. He produced 29 shellac sides in the late 1920s that had immeasurable influence on American folk music after and then he disappeared. He did exist, but exists now only as a phantom, a heat apparition rising from a dusty dirt road in some God-forsaken Third-World corner of these United States. Yet his visage beckons like Ahab from ...

17
Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Read "Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960" reviewed by Mark Sullivan


Finding a lost movie soundtrack by composer/pianist Thelonious Monk at this late date seems an improbable event, at the very least. But that is what we have here: previously unreleased performances heard in Roger Vadim's famous 1959 French film Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The official soundtrack album released at the time included only the music by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with Barney Wilen that was also recorded for the film. Monk did not compose any new music for the ...

11
Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Read "Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


There's a purity and innocence in the music of pianist/composer Thelonious Monk. But a subtle complexity colored his tunes, masked by an enchanting approach-ability. You hear “Bemsha Swing," “Well You Needn't," “In Walked Bud," and the melodies won't leave your head; they soak into your neural circuitry, permanently. Monk emerged in the late forties with a series of 78 rpm discs collected into two volumes of The Genius of Modern Jazz (Blue Note Records, 1952). He recorded for ...

14
Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Read "Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960" reviewed by Mark Corroto


It's nearly impossible to underestimate the importance of the discovery of the tapes Thelonious Monk made for the French film Les Liasons Dangereuses 1960. Recorded in New York in July 1959, the session, although used in the film, was filed away for some 55 years. Recovered and remastered, we hear not only the soundtrack, but alternate takes and Monk rehearsing his band. Monk had never scored a soundtrack, but was convinced by the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter to ...

37
Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Read "Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski


The magnitude of archival material in jazz music is enormous and overflowing as basements and attics are full with unreleased materials, outtakes and alternate versions by various artists. It's such a medium where recordings used to be made in a matter of few days. Over the years, most or some of that material has found its place on numerous deluxe or anniversary reissues or exclusive content for various box sets. It's a very rare occurrence when a material that was ...


Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.