LimeWire Music Blog

This album finds Monk alone at the keyboard, a mode he’s been captured in a few other times in his career, but Piano Solos comes at a crucial point in his discography. Recorded in 1954, between the end of his Prestige period and the beginning of his tenure on Riverside, this session was originally released on the small Everest label, and has largely fallen between the cracks of Monk’s vast, stellar catalog. Rescued from the lost-and-found drawer of history, Piano Solos proves to be as striking and substantive a musical statement as any of his other solo recordings. Tackling titanic compositions from his own songbook, like “Well You Needn’t” and “Off Minor,” Monk comes off like a kid in a candy store, unfettered by accompanists and free to wander down whichever harmonic detour happens to suit his fancy from moment to moment. Meanwhile, listening to him reinterpret a standard like “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” from the ground up offers a lesson in the possibilities of alternate harmonies and reminds us that Monk’s genius had as much to do with the way he heard music as it did with the tunes he wrote.