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Misterioso is a live album by American jazz ensemble the Thelonious Monk Quartet, released in 1959 by Riverside Records. Monk recorded the album on August 7, 1958, at the Five Spot Café in New York City with his new quartet, which featured drummer Roy Haynes, bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin. It was his first successful live recording.

The album and its title track were titled as a reference to Monk's reputation as an enigmatic, challenging musician at the time. The album's cover art appropriates Giorgio de Chirico' 1915 painting The Seer. In response to the venue's enthusiastic crowd, Monk played more vividly than on his studio recordings. Misterioso features four of his earlier compositions, which Monk rearranged live.

In contemporary reviews of the album, music critics complimented Monk's performance, but were ambivalent towards Griffin, whose playing they felt was out of place with the quartet. Misterioso was remastered and reissued in 1989 and 2012 by Original Jazz Classics. Since its initial reception, the album has received retrospective acclaim from critics, who viewed Griffin's playing as a highlight.

Background

After returning to the New York City club scene with his new quartet, pianist and composer Thelonious Monk began performing at the Five Spot Café in mid 1958. His quartet featured drummer Roy Haynes, bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin. On August 7, they performed an evening show at the club, whose overcrowded room was set up with equipment to record a live album for Monk's label Riverside Records. It was his first successful live recording after he had tried to record there a month earlier, but rejected the show's results. The August 7 show also yielded Monk's 1958 album Thelonious in Action.

According to Orrin Keepnews, who produced Misterioso, the album and its title track were titled as a mild play on the words "mist" and "mystery" to evoke the perception of Monk's music as enigmatic and challenging at the time. Jazz critic Neil Tesser said that the word, which is Latin for "in a mysterious manner", was "used most often as a musical direction in classical music scores. But by the time Monk's quartet recorded this music 'Misterioso' had largely come to identify Monk himself." The album's cover art is a reproduction of Giorgio de Chirico' 1915 painting The Seer and, according to musicologist Robert G. O'Meally, reflects "the mysterious violations of convention of perspective, the silences, and oddly attractive angles (the overall futuristic quality) in Monk's music."

Composition

The songs played on Misterioso were arranged by Monk, who reworked four of his earlier compositions. Keepnews remarked on Monk's musicality in the album's liner notes: "t should be axiomatic that Monk is a constantly self-renewing composer-arranger-musician, that each new recording of an 'old' number, particularly with different personnel, represents a fresh view of it—almost a new composition." Monk played piano more vividly and less introspectively than on his studio recordings in response the enthusiastic crowds he drew nightly to the Five Spot Café.

On "Nutty", Griffin incorporated lines from "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" and exhibited a frenetic swing that was complemented by counterplay from Haynes and Monk. "Blues Five Spot", a new composition by Monk, is a twelve-bar blues homage to the Five Spot Café that featured solos from each member of the quartet. Griffin and Monk transfigured chord structures and melodies throughout the performance. Griffin's solo vamp maintained the song's rhythm while quoting lines from other pieces, including the theme song for the animated Popeye theatrical shorts; he played "The Sailor's Hornpipe" at the end of "Blues Five Spot".

The quartet began "In Walked Bud" with an eight-bar piano intro and thirty-two-bar form by the quartet. Griffin began his solo a minute into the song with saxophone wails. In the third minute, Monk did not play, and Griffin played fast phrases the top of his register with intermittently slower R&B and free jazz elements. Monk shouted approvingly throughout Griffin's solo before resumed piano and played a two-minute theme. Monk performed a brief, unaccompanied version of the standard "Just a Gigolo", which was the only song on the album not composed by Monk. It comprises a single chorus.

First recorded in 1948, the title track was one of Monk's most influential recordings and was based on a series of minor second clusters. The performance showcased his idiosyncratic playing of one blue note next to another. Monk superimposed musical ideas that deviated from the song's original tonal center, adding a C blue note to the D-flat blue note. Haynes' subdued drumming backed Griffin's aggressive bop playing and extended solo on "Misterioso".

Release and reception

Misterioso was released in 1959 by Riverside and sold for a retail price of $4.98. It was Monk's eighth album for the label. Nat Hentoff, writing in Hi Fi Review, said that the album is "not one of his best" and observed "too little space for Monk's soloing and somewhat too much" for Griffin, whose impressive saxophone "cry" and timing do not "convincingly tie together solos". Hentoff also felt that Haynes and Abdul-Malik do not support Monk as creatively as Wilbur Ware and Art Blakey had on his previous Riverside albums, where he said Monk was in more "hypnotic" form. In 1959, Monk was voted in first place in an annual poll of international jazz critics from Down Beat magazine, who said he can be heard "at his challenging, consistently creative best" on Misterioso. Upon the album's 1964 release in the United Kingdom, Charles Fox of Gramophone gave Misterioso a positive review and found its music "well up to standard", with Monk "in good form" and the rhythm section performing "excellently, with Roy Haynes displaying once again what a great drummer he was then – and, indeed, still is today." However, Fox felt that Griffin did not fit in with the quartet and overshadowed Monk's compositions, finding his solos diffuse and characterized by trivial quotations rather than any "attempt at development".

In a retrospective review, Allmusic's Lindsay Planer gave Misterioso five out of five stars and said that the quartet "continually reinvent" their strong, cohesive sound with "overwhelming and instinctual capacities" throughout the album. Planer particularly praised Griffin, whom he said "consistently liberates the performances." In the All Music Guide: The Definitive Guide to Popular Music (2001), Scott Yanow also gave it five stars and viewed that Misterioso is slightly better than Thelonious in Action because of Griffin's "memorable improvising on a heated version" of "In Walked Bud". Robert Christgau said that, along with Brilliant Corners (1957), the album represents Monk's artistic peak. Christgau cited it as his favorite album of all time and, in a 2009 article for The Barnes & Noble Review, said that Griffin's tenor solo on "In Walked Bud" remains his "favorite five minutes of recorded music."

Reissues

In 1989, Misterioso was digitally remastered on CD by mastering engineer Joe Tarantino, who used 20-bit K2 Super Coding System technology at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California. On May 15, 2012, Concord Music Group reissued the album as part of their Original Jazz Classics Remasters series, along with Jazz at Massey Hall (1953) and Bill Evans' 1962 album Moonbeams. The reissue featured 24-bit remastering by Tarantino and three previously unreleased tracks, including a medley of "Bye-Ya" and "Epistrophy" performed with drummer Art Blakey. Concord vice president Nick Phillips, who produced the reissue series, said that Misterioso is "an all-time classic live Thelonious Monk record" and "an indelible snapshot of Monk live in the late '50s."

Track listing

All songs were composed by Thelonious Monk, except where noted.

Personnel

Release history

References

1. ^ Fantasy 1995, p. 70.
2. ^ Keepnews, Orrin (1959). Misterioso (LP liner notes). New York: Riverside Records. {{cite AV media notes}}: Unknown parameter |artist= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |publisherid= ignored (help)
3. ^ Planer, Lindsay. "Misterioso - Thelonious Monk, Thelonious Monk Quartet". Allmusic. Archived from the original on March 25, 2013. Retrieved March 25, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
4. Schuller, Gunther (1958). "Thelonious Monk". The Jazz Review. New York. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
5. ^ Tesser, Neil (2012). Misterioso (CD reissue liner notes). Original Jazz Classics. {{cite AV media notes}}: Unknown parameter |artist= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |publisherid= ignored (help)
6. O'Meally et al. 1997, p. 39.
7. ^ Fox, Charles (August). "Jazz and Swing". Gramophone. 42. London: 118. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
8. ^ Christgau, Robert (December 13, 2009). "Not So Misterioso". The Barnes & Noble Review. Archived from the original on April 12, 2013. Retrieved April 12, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
9. Kurtz, Alan (May 26, 2008). "Thelonious Monk: Misterioso (1958)". Jazz.com. Archived from the original on April 12, 2013. Retrieved April 12, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
10. ^ Hentoff, Nat (1959). "Thelonious Monk Quartet – Misterioso". Hi Fi Review. 2: 115. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
11. ^ "Thelonious Monk". Down Beat. 26 (16). Chicago: 56. August 20, 1959.
12. Yanow et al. 2001, p. 1334.
13. Christgau, Robert (February 22, 2005). "Noise on Music Central". The Village Voice. New York. Archived from the original on April 12, 2013. Retrieved April 12, 2013. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
14. "Thelonious Monk / Thelonious Quartet Monk - Misterioso CD Album". CD Universe. Muze. Archived from the original on March 29, 2013. Retrieved March 29, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
15. "Original Jazz Classics Add Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk and the Quartet Titles". All About Jazz. April 9, 2012. Archived from the original on March 29, 2013. Retrieved March 29, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
16. "Misterioso OJCCD 206 2 : Thelonious Monk Quartet". Concord Music Group. Archived from the original on March 29, 2013. Retrieved March 29, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
17. "Misterioso (Original Jazz Classics Remasters)". Concord Music Group. Archived from the original on March 29, 2013. Retrieved March 29, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

Bibliography

• Original Jazz Classics Collector's Guide. San Francisco: Fantasy, Inc. 1995. ISBN 0963742132.
• O'Meally, Robert G.; et al. Bowles, Juliette (ed.). "The International Review of African American Art". 14 (1). Hampton University Museum. {{cite journal}}: |chapter= ignored (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |first= (help)
• Yanow, Scott; et al. (2001). Bogdanov, Vladimir; Woodstra, Chris; Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (eds.). All Music Guide: The Definitive Guide to Popular Music (4th ed.). Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 0879306270. {{cite book}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)

External links

• Misterioso at Discogs (list of releases)

• Pages with empty short description
• 1959 live albums
• Albums produced by Orrin Keepnews
• Albums recorded at the Five Spot
• Original Jazz Classics live albums
• Riverside Records live albums
• Thelonious Monk live albums