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The final result was stitched together by Keepnews from 25 incomplete takes. Refusing to share sheet music of the unusual 30-bar form, Monk insisted the group keep attempting to get a complete run through, which almost led to a physical confrontation with Pettiford. The album introduced three new Monk standards, but the extraordinarily intricate title track was the project’s signature achievement. Sonny Rollins, the era’s dominant tenor saxophonist, was joined by esteemed trumpeter Clark Terry and unsung, blues-drenched altoist Ernie Henry. Both earned strong reviews, though some critics complained about the lack of Monk originals.įeaturing drum great Max Roach and bassist Oscar Pettiford, who anchored the two previous albums, Brilliant Corners presented Monk as a composer of the highest order. Rather than trying to capitalize on Monk’s far-out image, Keepnews presented him as a visionary firmly in jazz’s mainstream with two trio sessions: 1955’s Thelonious Monk Plays the Music of Duke Ellington and 1956’s standards session The Unique Thelonious Monk. Ready for a change, Monk signed with Riverside Records in 1955 after producer Orrin Keepnews famously paid off the pianist’s outstanding debt to Prestige ($108.27). Signed to Prestige Records, he recorded sporadically and grew increasingly frustrated as his career languished while labelmates flourished, particularly the Modern Jazz Quartet and Miles Davis (one of the few artists at the time who regularly played and recorded Monk’s tunes). Gigs were few and far between throughout the first half of the 1950s. The loss of his cabaret card in 1951-due to narcotics bust where Monk refused to testify against his close friend Bud Powell-locked him out of Manhattan nightclubs. But he was better known for his unusual behavior, quirks that sometimes stemmed from undiagnosed manic depression. The compositions he recorded for Blue Note between 1947-48 earned him some renown, but few colleagues tackled his knotty harmonies and tricky rhythmic settings. Part of the loose confederation of players who forged the new idiom of bebop at Minton’s Playhouse in mid-1940s Harlem, Monk was both central to the modernist movement and resolutely apart. Immediately hailed by critics and Monk’s musical peers as a major new work, the album played a key role in changing the trajectory of his career after years of being undervalued as a pianist and sidelined as an eccentric. More than a masterpiece, Brilliant Corners was the culmination of a carefully devised plan to reintroduce Thelonious Monk as modern jazz’s preeminent composer.