Billboard : 04/13/1957
Special Merit Jazz Album

Here’s another refresher for those who feel modern jazz is slipping into ruts. It’s one of the most absorbing, provocative and – with a little application – enjoyable programs in recent months. The unorthodox Monk, in his writing and playing, seems more mature and valid than ever. In the same “thinking” yet virile vein are the great Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Ernie Henry, Oscar Pettiford and Clark Terry. Tracks are too long for most jocks, unfortunately, but not for serious jazz buyers.

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Army Times
Tom Scanlan : 08/17/1957

Thelonious Monk has an unusual approach to music as well as an unusual name. One of the most important innovators of bop a decade ago, Monk’s work has always been a matter for debate and the pianist’s newest record is no exception.

The music of Thelonious has been called provocative, disturbing, challenging, original, curious, humorous, brilliant, strange, limited, sardonic, crazy (in the old fashioned sense), deceptively sleazy, gnarled and craggy.

The last three adjectives are to be found in the current issue of High Fidelity magazine in a useful, though highly opinionated, discography of jazz pianists by John S. Wilson. (Man, I can see the sleazy, but what does gnarled and craggy have to do with the way Monk plays piano?)

If other adjectives are desired, I feel the urge to toss two more into the boiling pot: precious and cute.

As anyone can plainly see, Monk’s artistry – if it is that – is something that evokes strong opinions. This, of course, is a compliment. True artists just naturally upset, enlighten, annoy.

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Monk’s new LP contains four Monk compositions, typically curious, played by a quintet, and I Surrender, Dear, a piano solo. Sidemen on all but one of the selections are alto man Ernie Henry, tenor man Sonny Rollins, bassman Oscar Pettiford and drummer Max Roach.

This reviewer, who is not a Thelonious enthusiast and can therefore be blessed or damned as the case may be, nevertheless found a mood-creator called Pannonica very interesting, indeed. I believe it is worth close attention although I am not sure that it is “a jazz,” as that elusive Topsy-like term is now understood. Although I cannot tell you precisely why, I liked it, and believe it demands the attention of anyone interested in contemporary music.

The other Monk compositions on the LP are, I suspect, only for the initiated. In any event, they are admittedly out of my ken although I do not question their refreshing originality.

And those who admire the tenor sax of Sonny Rollins will surely enjoy the album. Sonny has lots of solo room as does Bird-derived alto man Ernie Henry.

As for I Surrender, Dear, this is clearly not what many pianists, including even second raters, would call piano playing. I have listened to it twice carefully and I do not intend to hear it again, thank you. If this moves you, then you dig it, man, over and over again. You pays your money and takes your choice.

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Audio 
Charles A. Robertson : June, 1957

After releasing two albums of Thelonious Monk at work with trio instrumentation on standard tunes, if Duke Ellington can be called standard, Riverside reveals the method to its planning: “a plot to seduce non-followers of Monk into giving him a hearing.” The test of this theory is in the four originals on this disc as his unorthodox construction and approach make a demand for the undivided attention of the listener.

That this sort of handling should also help a non-conformist develop and broaden as an artist is a happy, though unforeseeable, incident. The assurance of a carefully prepared outlet for his creative talent seems to have resulted in almost a spiritual rebirth for this molder of modern jazz. It is one of his most important records, representing a maturity and security he could not feel before. And it was Monk who suggested a change of pace with his moody piano solo of I Surrender Dear.

Brilliant Corners finds him at his most challenging, and Blue Bolivar Blues has room for inventive solos by Sonny Rollins, tenor sax, and Ernie Henry, whose work on alto justifies this label’s faith in him. On the balladic Pannonica, Monk uses a celeste to good effect. A definitive Bohemia-Swing has Clark Terry, trumpet, replacing Henry, and Paul Chambers substituting for Oscar Pettiford on bass. Here Max Roach uses tympani as well as drums for added excitement and depth of tonal color. It is extremely effective and kept in balance by engineer Jack Higgins for some of the best sound from kettledrums on a jazz side.

Monk is one of the few pianists of any period who knows what not to play, and he seems to have entered on a new era of growth as a composer. Riverside’s planning is beginning to bear fruit.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 05/12/1957

A big man with the piano is Thelonious Monk. Lots of his stuff keeps showing up on 12-inch LPs. Now a fresh look from Riverside with Brilliant Corners. It’s an important record. Monk demonstrates what has made him a jazz pioneer. The man is moving all the time. I like the time differences on the opening title piece. This is quintet music. Sonny Rollins, Oscar Pettiford, Max Roach and Ernie Henry sit in on four of the five numbers. On Monk’s Bemsha Swing, Clark Terry‘s trumpet replaces the Henry alto sax and Paul Chambers has the bass role. I have never leaned to drum solos on record, but Roach seems always to be saying something, not just demonstrating flexibility of wrist and fingers. A highlight is the bass solo by Pettiford on Balue Bolivar.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 09/08/1957

Musings of the recluse of modern jazz, in which he has the aid of such star jazzmen as Clark Terry, Oscar Pettiford and Sonny Rollins. Introspective modern jazz, with a basic swinging beat and some excellent solo statements.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 05/25/1957

Thelonious Monk, who might as well be called the father of modern jazz piano, is to be heard in a program largely of his own compositions, in which he is assisted by such fine talents as Ernie Henry, also sax; Sonny Rollins, tenor sax; Oscar Pettiford, bass; and Max Roach, drums. The ground tone here is exceedingly blue and sophisticated, as may be gathered from the title of one number – Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are – which is explained as the phonetic spelling of Mr. Monk’s idea of the fitting pronunciation of Blue Bolivar Blues. Splendid! For me, the particular joys are in Mr. Monk’s own piano playing. I have hitherto referred to him in this space as the Erik Satie of the jazz piano – which means to me that he is highly original, succinct, witty, and full of fine lyric graces.

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Saturday Review
Martin Williams : 06/15/1957

This set shows that Monk continues to develop a music soundly aware of its origins and willing to grow along the lines implicit in jazz itself. Monk even has the capacity to turn his limitations into virtues, and he can bring out the best in others – as with Rollins here. The fact that Bemsha Swing, in a sense the simplest piece, is probably the most successful in no way refutes the growth to be heard in the others. Monk is an artist in a field with its full share of craftsmen.

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Tampa Bay Times
Chick Ober : 09/08/1957

Modern jazz as performed by Thelonious Monk is music in which an important creative talent has been poured. It is music which should be listened to again and again. Like a great symphony, many new experiences are gained by the listener with each replaying.

In his latest Riverside album, Brilliant Corners, Monk’s keyboarding is supported by such sidemen as Ernie Henry, alto; Sonny Rollins, tenor; Max Roach, drums, and Oscar Pettiford, bass. Monk is also heard on celeste in Pannonica.

Other numbers include: Brilliant Corners, Balue Bolivar, Bemsha Swing, all written by Monk, and the standard I Surrender Dear.

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Down Beat : 06/13/1957
Nat Hentoff : 5 stars

This is really a mood album, the kind of mood that envelops corners that can be called brilliant but are more inimitable than that increasingly indiscriminate adjective might connote. Monk is an instantly identifiable individual in a music world that recently has been more marked by the ubiquitousness of mirrors than by its one-of-a-kind landmarks.

Because Monk is wholly himself, the corners of his musical imagination yield continually unexpected, freshly personal thoughts, and these in turn are linked in consistency once the overall shape of Monk’s message is absorbed and reflected upon.

He does, then, create and deepen throughout this album a mood caused by the irresistible immediacy and originality of his stories and of the language in which they are spoken by him and his colleagues.

The notes underline the fact that Monk is writing here for five instrumental voices as contrasted with two previous sets without horns for the label. Frankly, I am less impressed with the actual writing for the five, particularly for that ensemble, than I am by the beginning impetus he gives each piece by his Monk-idiomatic melodic twists and pragmatic, this-is-how-I-hear-it chord structure.

The Monk musical personality thus having been set, he is able to dominate by the force of his personality the resultant scene so that the soloists, while they retain their individuality, nonetheless fit their improvisations into Monk’s perspective. There is a commanding gestalt operative in a Monk performance for no matter how many instruments, and when he has men who are willing to work with him, as here, the impact of that gestalt is all the more memorable – and influential on other musicians.

Monk remains the most formidable player of Monk, but he gets excellent cooperation here from Roach, Pettiford, and Rollins (dig Sonny on Track 2). Henry is forceful and in context but is not yet as authoritative a voice as Sonny. (It’s not paradoxical to point out that Monk is heard to best advantage with strong individual personalities.) Terry and Chambers make it in their one track. And Monk by himself translating I Surrender, Dear into his weltanschauung is one of the listening balls of the year, any year. This is Riverside’s most important modern jazz LP to date.

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Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

Thelonious Monk remains among the most challenging, provocative and disturbing figures in modern music. He has consistently been described in such terms for as long as he has been on the jazz scene – which is precisely as long as there has been modern jazz, for Monk of course was one of the principal molders of the new jazz. He will very probably continue to be described this way. For Monk’s music is decidedly not designed for casual listening. Everything he writes and plays is jazz into which an important creative talent has put more than a little of himself. Thus, inevitably, Monk and his music demand the most difficult thing any artist can require of his audience – attention.

Thelonious Monk’s music can also be among the most rewarding in modern jazz. And it is that (to those who will listen) for exactly the same reasons that it challenges, disturbs and demands: because Monk is himself. What he offers is not smooth, public-relations-conscious artifice or surface skills, but merely the music that is in him and that he is impelled to bring forth. There are men who can bend and shape themselves and their work (perhaps to fit current public taste, perhaps to suit the aims of a stronger artistic personality). There are others whose natural, undiluted self-expression manages to strike a responsive chord in lots of souls, or at least seems to. Finally, there are those non-benders and non-conformers who don’t happen even to seem easy to understand. Among these is Monk, and for such men the basic audience can consist only of those who are willing to try a bit to grasp the stimulating, intensely rewarding message that is being sent out.

These comments are not intended as any sort of fairly clever reverse-twist psychology (you know: “only very hip people, like me and like you-who-are-reading-these-notes, can really dig Thelonious”). On the contrary, we at Riverside feel very strongly that the whole emphasis on the exceedingly far-out and “mysterious” nature of Monk’s music has been seriously overdone in past yeas, so that many who would have found themselves quite willing (and able) to listen were frightened away in advance. This is Thelonious’ third album for this label; the first two were entirely made up of standard tunes, played with trio instrumentation. This was fully deliberate; a plot to seduce non-followers of Monk into giving him a hearing. There was no musical compromise; but there was at least the handle of a familiar melody to begin with.

Those two previous albums – as reviewers, musicians and others with no special need to flatter Monk or us have noted – were outstanding, articulate efforts. But the present LP is something else again. This is Thelonious at work on matters much more difficult (and therefore potentially even more rewarding): this is Monk writing, in his own highly personal way, for five instrumental voices. It is Monk expressing himself by means of the unorthodox construction, approach, and phrasing that is uniquely his, and that has by now matured into a style possessing great depth, wit and strength.

(The one exception here, a solo treatment of the standard I Surrender, Dear in a compellingly moody vein, came about because Monk felt like it and felt that it was a change of pace that would fit in. It did.)

It should be noted at about this point that Monk’s music is not only not the easiest listening, it is also not easy to play. Musicians could save themselves a lot of trouble by not recording with Monk – but it’s a form of trouble that a great many of the best men have long considered a privilege (as well as an education).

Sonny Rollins is a wonderfully inventive, strong-toned tenor man who has already made a considerable impact on the jazz public and on fellow musicians, and who is clearly going on to a position of even greater importance. Ernie Henry worked in Monk’s quartet during 1956, and then took over Phil Woods‘ alto chair in Dizzy Gillespie‘s big band; he is a fluid, leaping, non-derivative stylist who has appeared on two previous Riverside LPs and whom we are betting on for near-future stardom. Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach no longer need fancy descriptive adjectives: by now surely their names alone tell the story. When Henry and Pettiford were unavailable for the final date, the replacements were of top calibre: Clark Terry (a stand-out with Duke Ellington since 1951 and termed, by Leonard Feather, “one of the most original trumpet players in contemporary jazz”) and Paul Chambers, currently with Miles Davis and among the very finest of the newer bassists.

These men worked hard. They struggled and concentrated and shook their heads over some passages with those half-smiles that mean: “Hard? this is impossible!” For the original compositions on this date represent Monk at his most inventive and therefore (to repeat myself) at his most challenging. Brilliant Corners, with its uneven meter and its tempo changes, is undoubtedly the real back-breaker, but this doesn’t mean that the others are simple: Pannonica, which I’d describe as a near-ballad with guts; the blues, which has lots of extended blowing room (and don’t neglect to dig the several things Monk is doing behind the horns); and Bemsha Swing, only one of the four originals not specifically prepared for this record date – Thelonious wrote it several years ago, with drummer Denzil Best, and has recorded it twice previously, but comparison will show that it hasn’t remained static during that time.

(A note on the odd title of the blues: it is merely an attempt to set down phonetically the pronunciation Monk insisted on as most fitting for what might most simply be called Blue Bolivar Blues.)

These musicians worked hard, also, because Monk’s creativity never stands still: during a preliminary run-through of a number, between ‘takes’ or even during one, changes of phrasing or of detail will evolve, as a constant fusion of arrangement and improvisation keeps taking place. Sometimes even instrumentation gets altered a bit. Thelonious came across a celeste in the studio, decided it would go well in Pannonica, and so set it up at right angles to the piano to be able to play celeste with the right hand, piano with the left, during part of this number. Similarly, it was an impromptu bit of experimentation that results in Max Roach’s ‘doubling’ on tympany and drums through Bemsha Swing, in most unorthodox and effective fashion.

And Monk is a hard task-master at a recording session, a perfectionist (“I’ve never been satisfied with one of my records yet,” he says, and means it) who knows just how he wants each not bent and phrased and who drives the others as hard as he drives himself – which, in an abstract sense, is possibly a little unfair of him.

In the end, it wasn’t “impossible” – merely far from easy, and in the end everyone else was satisfied and Monk probably almost satisfied. And the final results are obviously very much worth having accomplished and (to return to the first theme of these comments) worth paying attention to.