Description
Many consider "Misterioso" a game changing album for Monk. Finally, some argued, the glowing originality, personality and complicated beauty of Monk's music came through almost perfectly in a live recording. Some also claim that this album initiated the opening of the door to a wider popular acceptance of Monk's music. Though historical progressions don't always pivot easily upon single events, listeners today can still feel the energy of the performance that pounds out from this now almost sixty year old recording. Appreciation for physical mastery of a physical instrument, though still present, seems diminished in a digital age of auto-tuning and vocoders. "Misterioso" shows a quartet, physical instruments at every hand, approaching musical ecstasy in front of an intimate audience that often comes across as aloof or distant, but perhaps that represents that age's height of "cool." In any case, this album now occupies a place among Monk's best works and among the best recordings of twentieth-century jazz. The intervening, and still piling-up, years have only solidified the reputation of Thelonious Monk.
