As a votive offering to the late Thelonious Monk—whose music has been a focus in the concerts and lectures of the Spring 2007 season of the San Francisco Jazz Festival—SF Jazz Artistic Director, alto-saxophonist, composer and bandleader, Joshua Redman, brings his all-star quartet to the Herbst Theatre, devoting the evening to the remembrance of Monk and 'Trane’s Live at Carnegie Hall recording from November ’57, which was recently discovered at the Library of Congress. In ’57, Monk had just regained his cabaret card after a six-year suspension due to drug charges, and 'Trane had just been fired by Miles for his heroine addiction. The few years that Monk and 'Trane played together were considered pivotal years in their lives, involving spiritual transformation and musical growth, while only two recordings – Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (Riverside/OJC) and Discovery! Live at the Five Spot (Blue Note/EMI) – ever officially surfaced; that is until a previously unknown recording of the quartet recorded at Carnegie Hall was found in 2005 by a Larry Applebaum, a supervisor and jazz specialist at the Library of Congress, and released on Blue Note later that year.

Thelonious Monk Quartet’s Carnegie Hall Concert

The ten-song set was part a benefit for the Morningside Community Center, the bill also featuring Billy Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, Chet Baker with Zoot Sims, Monk & 'Trane, and Sonny Rollins. Monk and 'Trane’s song list reads: "Monk’s Mood," "Evidence," "Crepuscule with Nellie," "Nutty," "Epistrophy," "Bye-Ya," "Sweet and Lovely," and "Blue Monk." Backed by bassist Ahmed Abdoul-Malik and drummer Shadow Wilson, Monk lays down his fragmented swing, with its rebellious hits chopping the tortured swing into micro-sections in which 'Trane fights to break free, resolve the phrases and finally soar above the swing with his somber ire. On “Evidence,” 'Trane is able to work his solo into longer and longer melodic units showing traces of his “sheets of sound,” that crash against the sparse and rocky angularity, of his Monk’s rhythm, which always seems to surround an implied beat, the two locking in on Monk’s stretched harmonics, which always seem to include every note around an implied voice, perfectly out, dissonance to the point of assonance.

On “Nutty,” 'Trane is really able to blow over the blues changes, Monk even laying out at times to let the thick melody take form over the bass line. On “Sweet and Lovely,” an old ballad and the only song not composed by Monk in the set, we hear perhaps best the melodic union of the two, each exploring newer and newer melodic variations, with a volcanic build up of tension that gives way to a double-time swing that sends 'Trane off into the air above Monk’s quizzical chords.

Joshua Redman Quartet’s Herbst Theatre Concert

The piano, bass, saxophone, and drum kit stand soberly beneath the dimly lit stage, and from the balcony, the blue, gold-leaf ceiling sooths the fiery reds in the column lined beaux-arts murals, a Carnegie Hall of San Francisco. The band taking the stage wordlessly, the set opens up with “Crepuscule with Nellie,” Brad Mehldau starting the slow blues with a itinerant piano introduction, his hands swapping roles, alternately playing rhythm and melody on multiple octaves, the statements disjointed and Monkish in harmony, and Mehldau’s distinctive lyrical sound coming through. As Redman enters with the theme, I begin to hear the Carnegie Hall concert, all the while hearing the proverbial sounds of the 1994 Redman Quartet, Christian McBride’s muscular swing, and Brian Blade’s vigilant build up, his head usually cocked as to hear and feel every slight nuance of he band’s variations in a way that I have only seen in Al Foster’s listening, and brewing slowly the rhythms into drum-melodies and themes. Mehldau begins unhurried, in charge, a long and meandering line following the descending melodic theme, with the right hand, the lone melody giving way to altered arpeggios in the piano’s lowest register. Redman’s tenor tone is more airy than 'Trane’s, a bit more like the sound of 'Trane’s son, Ravi. Being a ballad, the first number sounded the most like the original, the band beginning by honing in on the spirit of the Carnegie show, the space of the Carnegie almost perceptible.

They follow up “Crespecule with Nellie” with “Nutty,” just as Monk had, a hard-hitting medium swing, and Redman takes the first solo. As with the Carnegie recording, the sax is less restrained by complex changes and begins to attain altitude and intensity. While Redman plays some 'Trane influenced lines, they are more his own interpretation of Monk’s melody, beginning in choppy fragments and working into long sheets of sound slowly, unlike 'Trane’s solo on the original that jumped right into the fire. Mehldau and McBride follow with swinging solos, Mehldau bringing in some left-hand ragtime trills while the right hand walks, emulating Monk’s solo, but when the melody starts to develop, it takes on Mehldau’s sound, almost more Jarrett-like in its rolling ease at times, and at times more Monkish in it’s sparseness and erratic variability. McBride plays a long solo unlike Ahmed Abdoul-Malik on the original, breaking the rhythm down with Blade’s accompaniment, into 16th notes and 32nd notes, and working in an allusion to Monk’s “Rhythm-a-Ning.”

“Evidence” begins with a drum solo that brings in the tortured hits of the song, leading into the head played my Redman and Mehldau over a walking bass-line, the sharp hits clashing with the straightness of the bass line, and Blade melding both sides together. McBride and Blade’s super-syncopation adds a new dimension to Monk’s music, while preserving its fragility. After the head is played, Mehldau starts the first solo with single notes staying on the jarring rhythm, followed by Redman’s solo which works in quotes from “Giant Steps.” The song ends with a drum solo in which Blade incorporates alternations to the melody’s rhythm, slowly building into a frantic buzz role behind the hits.

The fourth song, “Monk’s Mood,” brings the feel back to that of “Crepuscule with Nellie,” the ballad beginning with a long roaming introduction by Redman, breaking into an unaccompanied bass solo, and finishing with the theme played by the whole band. From there they moved onto Monk’s “Epistrophy,” a unique composition made up of alternating chords that are a semi-tone apart.

“Sweet and Lovely,” the only song on the original not composed by Monk, is a ballad that begins to swing. Mehldau plays Monk’s descending re-harmonization with his left hand while playing the melody with his right, Redman harmonizing with the notes airily. Halfway through Redman’s solo, McBride and Blade step the swing up to double time, emulating Monk’s impromptu arrangement at Carnegie Hall. As an encore, they returned to play “Rejoice,” a bluesy Redman original.

Their first time together since ’94, Redman kept joking that the quartet had played together in the “early ‘90’s,” humbly grinning at his youth.

A Nod to the Band

Redman was raised in Berkeley, raised by a single mother and attended Berkeley High, where he played with their renowned jazz band. Graduating summa cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he was accepted into the Yale Law School the same year he won the Thelonious Monk Competition and pretty much took off from there in the jazz world, widely respected and a player with roots – Redman’s father, Dewey Redman was a extremely influential free-jazz saxophonist – and for his compositional vision.

“About sound, and about feeling. I always considered myself an emotional player as opposed to an intellectual player, but playing next to my dad night after night — and I did that for the first couple of years when I was in New York — all he had to do was play one note and it had so much more depth and feeling and conviction than a thousand of my notes. Sound really is your voice — your sound is the core of your expression as a saxophonist. And, for lack of a better word, how to play the blues. My dad plays the blues no matter what he's playing — when he's playing the blues or when he's playing something completely frenetic and out and free there's always that depth, that warmth, that bittersweet quality, there's so much love and joy and celebration but in the context of hardship and adversity. These are intellectual ways of describing what's a very emotional thing. But that's what I learned from him: phrasing, how to lay back and relax, the patience and wisdom of his approach” (Joshua Redman).

He was soon after signed with Warner Brother’s and began recording his first acoustic jazz albums, something which Warner Brothers isn’t known for promoting, starting with Joshua Redman (1993) with Kevin Hayes, Christian McBride and Gregory Hutchinson; Wish (1993) with Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins; Mood Swings (1994) with Mehldau, McBride and Blade; Spirit of the Moment: Live at the Village Vanguard (1995); Timeless Tales (1998); Beyond (2000) and Passage of Time (2001) with Aaron Goldberg on piano and Blades; Elastic (2002) and Momentum (2005) with Sam Yehel on keyboard and Blade; and Back East (2007) with McBride, Larry Grenadier, Dewey Redman, Joe Lovano, Chris Cheek. One of my favorites is his Elastic band which interprets the electric music of Miles Davis, Eddie Harris, Herbie Hancock and Weather Report. Redman is the Artistic Director of SF Jazz.

Born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1970, Brad Mehldau grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. While he started playing the piano early in life, it wasn’t until he heard a live John Coltrane record at a friend’s house when he was twelve that he developed a penchant for jazz and began listening extensively to Keith Jarrett’s Solo Concerts (Bremen/Lausanne), and studied the music of Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker. In 1988, Mehldau moved to New York to study piano at the New School, working with Fred Hersch, Junior Mance, Kenny Werner, Jackie McLean and Jimmy Cobb. Since his first trio album, Introducing Brad Mehldau, put out in 1995 by Warner Brothers, Meldhau has released 15 albums, recorded with Joshua Redman, Wayne Shorter, Charles Lloyd, John Scofield, Pat Metheny and Kurt Rosenwinkel, and composed soundtracks for seven films including Eyes Wide Shut and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. On his second album, Art of the Trio, I was particularly moved by his arrangement of Rogers and Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” which features a sample of his idiosyncratic time signatures and re-harmonization.

In Tom Wood’s essay, “Issues in the Analysis of Improvisation: A Structuralist Approach to the Music of Brad Mehldau,” he argues that Mehldau represents best the post-modern jazz musician, bringing together the formalism of past music with improvisation.

The original motivic language of the composition may have been discarded, or transformed beyond recognition. However, distinctive fragments of melody and rhythm saturate themselves throughout his musical designs – it is as if rather than using improvisation to escape the confines of a tune, Mehldau uses improvisation to build variations with the tune as their epicenter.”

Analyzing Mehldau’s solos on classic standards such as Miles Davis’ “Solar,” and Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are,” from his Art of the Trio, Woods focuses on his unique sense of re-harmonization, his innovative time signatures, his alternation between traditional jazz arrangements and innovative arrangements that mix classical theory and personal style. On improvisation, Mehldau states:

Improvisatory creation is not a medium that half-heartedly tries, but won’t rise up to, a written composition; on the contrary, it gives jazz its grandeur, which is a potential to eclipse written music in its performance. One might point out that classical music originally had its great improvisers. To close I offer a scenario: If all the written music in the world suddenly burned up in a flash, who could do a gig the same night, regardless?”

Grammy Award Winning bassist, Christian McBride, from Philadelphia, has worked with hundreds of musicians on both acoustic and electric bass, from McCoy Tyner to Sting to Diana Krall to Kathleen Battle, to David Sanborn, Chick Corea, Chaka Khan, Natalie Cole, George Benson, Joe Henderson, Betty Carter, Milt Jackson, Ray Brown, Wynton Marsalis. And the list goes on and on. Some of my favorite albums include Joe Henderson’s tribute to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Lush Life, on which his bass chord introduction to Duke’s piece, “Ishfahan,” has continued to haunt me, and Super Bass, a bass trio album with Ray Brown and John Clayton. McBride’s current quartet is made up of saxophonist Ron Blake, keyboardist Geoffrey Keezer, and drummer Terreon Gully. Check out their new album, Live at the Tonic, with special guests including Charlie Hunter and DJ Shadow.

A dedicated educator, McBride is Artistic Director at the Dave Brubeck Institute and the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Summer Series, and spoke at President Clinton’s Town Hall Meeting on “Racism and the Performing Arts.” On jazz education, he states:

To a degree, jazz is non-existent in most major urban communities, which deeply saddens me. Kids don't understand who our jazz greats were. My contribution towards rectifying this will be getting them to check out free events at the museum by inviting jazz and non-jazz musicians, athletes and speakers that they can relate to.”

Brian Blade grew up in Louisiana, first in Shreveport and then in New Orleans, where he gas grown musically under the guidance of Ellis Marsalis and drummers Johnny Vidakovic and Herlin Riley. Blade has recorded and toured with Joshua Redman, Kenny Garret, Bob Dylan (Time Out of Mind), Emmylou Harris (Wrecking Ball), and Joni Mitchell. What makes Blade stand out as one of the most interesting young drummers is his textural approach to percussion – utilizing a far reaching range of textures and tones, playing with his hands, rubbing the sticks across cymbals, playing on rims and drum stands – and his outstanding listening, responding to every shade of the music. Speaking about his early musical influences, Blade says:

Well, I grew up in church, so gospel music, I guess, was kind of the first music I heard. Choral music, sacred music. I have a pretty clear memory of hearing Al Green when I was at my grandmother's. It was kind of the first musical experience that sticks in my memory. But there was a lot along the way that I thought was great—Earth, Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder, all these things. Later, I got into Miles Davis and John Coltrane and Joni Mitchell, and all these recordings just made me want to buy more recordings.”

Bringing together some of my all-time favorite modern giants for the first time in over twelve years to reinterpret one of my favorite performance in 'azz history, tonight’s Herbst Theatre concert stands out as one of the most moving concerts I have beheld, and I think Monk would have stood on stage and spun around in circles if he had had a chance to hear it!

Watch: Thelonious Monk spinning on stage (the beginning of Clint Eastwood’s documentary on Monk, Straight No Chaser):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixahuLVBNM4&mode=related&search=

Watch: Thelonious Monk Quartet: “Epistrophy”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2s6LZUdYaU

Watch: Thelonious Monk Quartet in Paris, 1969: “Round Midnight”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX_mwDvcZ2I