(Post-Bop, Modern Creative, Progressive Jazz) The Microscopic Septet - Friday the Thirteenth: The Micros Play Monk - 2010, MP3, 320 kbps

Originally active from 1980-1992, the "Micros" started with a basic reeds-and-rhythm texture that was sonically similar to the sound of the Swing Era, but used influences from the entire continuum of jazz. The result was a brilliant blend of fresh-sounding ideas, compositions, arrangements and inspired soloing. The Micros were one of the most celebrated of the many cutting-edge units associated with experimental music's best-known venue, the Knitting Factory, during the peak years of the "Downtown" music movement in the late '80s and early '90s. In 2006, Cuneiform reissued their four albums as two double CD sets, which gained stupendous praise, attention and sales and the Micros reunited to play a few shows to celebrate their release and had such a good fun that they decided to make their reunion 'an occasional regular thing'. So, the Microscopic Septet are back with their first album in 20 years! Their sound is the sound of jazz in America; ALL of it, from Ayler to Zorn, bebop to Basie, Ellington to Thelonious. The Microscopic Septet distill the essence of jazz into a sound that swings - a music that is intelligent, sometimes humorous, and always good fun. They aren't afraid to have some fun with the great jazz tradition while also paying homage to it.

Review by Rick Anderson (allmusic.com)
Very few jazz composers have experienced the extremes of acceptance and rejection that were Thelonious Monk's lot. Ignored and rejected early in his career — in part for the oblique weirdness of his piano style, in part for the difficulty and angularity of his compositions, and in part because he was quite clearly mentally ill — he did at least live to see his music given the appreciation it deserved, and his work has only grown in esteem since his death in 1982. Today, his pieces are among the most frequently performed and recorded of any jazz composer; as popularity among musicians goes, his music is on the same level as that of Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. The Microscopic Septet (whom you may have heard playing the theme music to NPR's Fresh Air) have now dedicated an entire album to arrangements of Monk compositions, most of them familiar ones ("Misterioso," "Off Minor," "Epistrophy," etc.). Their arrangements are innovative but respectful: they take "Brilliant Corners" and shuffle its component parts around a little bit; they write some lovely counterpoint around the head on "Friday the 13th"; they give "Gallop's Gallop" a joyfully loose, communitarian treatment that sounds a bit like the second half of a New Orleans funeral. Part of what makes the Micros' take on these familiar tunes so enjoyable is their willingness to engage with Monk's sense of humor; the "difficulty" of his music is frequently puckish rather than forbidding, and too few musicians recognize that fact or capitalize on it. The group's unusual configuration (four saxophones and a piano trio) makes possible some very interesting timbral juxtapositions, and they make the most of that potential as well. Newcomers to Monk's music should let these arrangements lead them back to the original recordings on Riverside and Blue Note; longtime fans who think they've heard every possible interesting arrangement of these tunes should think again.

Phillip Johnston - soprano sax;
Don Davis - alto sax;
Mike Hashim - tenor sax;
Dave Sewelson - baritone sax;
Joel Forrester - piano;
Dave Hofstra - bass;
Richard Dworkin - drums