Photo: Album cover art
Monk and Rollins: a meeting of two immense musical minds.
This week on Night Lights we honor Sonny Rollins’ upcoming 75th birthday (Sept. 7, 2005) with “Sonnymoon,” a program of Rollins’ recordings with piano giant Thelonious Monk. Monk forged a musical friendship with Rollins when the tenor saxophonist was still in his teens, a friendship that eventually produced some of the 1950s’ most compelling jazz records. We’ll hear selections from Monk and Rollins’ dates for Prestige, their meeting on Monk’s Riverside LP Brilliant Corners, and a final studio encounter, recorded for Blue Note in 1957, in which Monk plays musical piano chairs with Horace Silver on the Monk tune “Misterioso.”
Music Heard On This Episode
Miss D.D.
Mary Lou Williams — Black Christ of the Andes (Smithsonian Folkways, 1964)
