Brilliant Corners

The bell-like keyboard in Pannonica offers a welcoming way into Brilliant Corners. Monk’s celesta changes the surface of an ensemble already full of contrasting voices; the next track leaves him alone at the piano. These shifts of texture are as rewarding as the title composition’s abrupt changes of pace. You can begin with a sound that catches your ear, without first learning an unusual musical form.

Monk recorded the album in New York in October and December 1956; Riverside released it in 1957. Sonny Rollins, Ernie Henry, Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach join him on the first three selections. I Surrender, Dear is solo piano. Bemsha Swing uses another group, bringing in trumpeter Clark Terry and bassist Paul Chambers alongside Rollins and Roach. The linked Fantasy remaster preserves the original five-track programme.

Five different surfaces

The five-track sequence moves between kinds of space. Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are gives the soloists an extended blues setting, with Monk’s accompaniment worth following in its own right. Pannonica brings in a small, bell-like keyboard sound, and I Surrender, Dear then removes the horns altogether. Remember the sound of the group when the piano is left alone: the absence changes how each note seems to occupy the room.

Hear the shape before counting it

You need not count every bar of the title piece to recognise a change of pace. Remember the melody, then compare the spacing of its notes when it moves faster. Producer Orrin Keepnews assembled the finished track from multiple takes; it is not a single uninterrupted performance that finally went perfectly. That production history matters, but the difficulties of making the record should not replace attention to the balance achieved within it.

A different weight at the end

Bemsha Swing adds Terry’s trumpet, Chambers’s bass and Roach’s timpani to the album’s palette. Knowing that the personnel change helps prevent hearing every difference as a compositional effect alone. Today, an inviting route through the record is simply to remember a short melody and observe what surrounds it on its return. A moment that refuses smooth expectation can make the next movement more interesting to wait for.