Thelonious Monk & Sonny Rollins - Brilliant Corners - Ltd. Edition Blue Coloured Vinyl

Label: Dol

2020 Reissue

180 Gram Blue Vinyl

1LP

Anniversary Collection

Limited Edition

Mono

Jazz

Brilliant Corners is a studio album by American jazz musician Thelonious Monk. It was his third album for Riverside Records, and the first, for this label, to include his own compositions. The complex title track required over a dozen takes in the studio.

According to Down Beat magazine, Brilliant Corners was the most critically acclaimed album of 1957. Nat Hentoff, the magazine's editor, gave it five stars in a contemporary review and called it "Riverside's most important modern jazz LP to date." Jazz writer David H. Rosenthal later called it a "classic" hard bop session. Music critic Robert Christgau said that, along with his 1958 live album Misterioso, Brilliant Corners represents Monk's artistic peak. In his five-star review of the album, Allmusic's Lindsay Planer wrote that it "may well be considered the alpha and omega of post-World War II American jazz. No serious jazz collection should be without it."

In 2003, Brilliant Corners was one of fifty recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. It has also been included in the reference book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, with reviewer Andrew Gilbert saying it "marked Monk's return as composer of the first order." Because of its historical significance the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.