Ben Goldberg’s Monk Album Goes Digital

Readers may recall that, this past October, clarinetist Ben Goldberg and drummer Scott Amendola used a performance in the jazz club! series at Bird & Beckett Books and Records to celebrate the digital release of the album Plays Monk, which had been released as a CD in 2009. The recording was a trio performance with Devin Hoff on bass, while Nate Brenner took the bass part at Bird & Beckett. Ever since the release of the six-CD collection Monk’s Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk, performed by a quartet led by Frank Kimbrough, I have been aware of how many different gigs tend to turn to such a small percentage of works in that complete catalog.

In that context I would say that Plays Monk has found a sweet spot between the tunes that get overplayed and the ones that tend to be consistently ignored. In that latter category I have a particular bias towards “Four in One,” which I have previously called “the musical version of a brain twister.” If this is music that challenges even the most attentive listener, it is easy to understand why those whose repertoire includes Monk tend to shy away from the tune. Goldberg, on the other hand, is far from shy; and this track on Plays Monk makes it clear that virtuosity is as appropriate to the Monk catalog as it is to any of the genres that tend to be called “serious music.”

The irony, of course, is that Monk was a pianist. There are any number of films now available on video from which one can appreciate the extensive variety of postures and gestures that emerge in Monk performances. Goldberg clearly does not try to capture the connection between the music that Monk created and the physicality behind its performance. Instead, he focused on the thematic foundations and then finds his own way to bring the music to life through his clarinet. The results on the original Plays Monk release were much more than merely satisfying; and, hopefully, the recent “digital upgrade” will allow more adventurous listeners to appreciate both the challenges and rewards that arise when one commits to exploring the less familiar Monk tunes.