JohnBeasley EPK MONK'estra Plays JohnBeasley

The two previous albums from MONK’estra carried the titles Volumes 1 and 2, and they didn’t need much else by way of introduction. It was right there in the name of the ensemble – the spirited, thoroughly modern big band dedicated to John Beasley’s ingenious arrangements of songs by Thelonious Monk, a composer as iconoclastic and memorable as his first name.

Monk wrote 70 compositions, almost all of them instantly identifiable as his work. MONK’estra has now recorded 22 of these gems, leaving plenty more for future volumes. So why rush? Here the repertoire makes room for Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” sung with blissful serenity by Jubilant Sykes, and Beasley’s phantasmagorical take on “Donna Lee,” a song usually ascribed to Charlie Parker (but almost certainly written by his acolyte Miles Davis). Beasley turns it into a genre-hopping suite, superimposing hard-core bebop over a variety of Caribbean rhythms and nodding to Jaco Pastorius’s famous rendition along the way.

Most important, there’s room for Beasley’s compositions – a sure reminder that his writing skills go beyond the riffs and fills and counter-themes that elevate his arrangements. The band spends most of this album playing Beasley’s songs, but the title – MONK’estra Plays John Beasley – still seems redundant. Whether it’s Monk or Duke or Bird or Miles – or, I suspect, Gregorian chant or Chinese court music – his wildly inventive writing ensures that the orchestra would always be “playing John Beasley.”

Beasley’s arrangements go beyond the usual parameters to become recompositions that alter the form, rhythm, and harmonies to illuminate some hidden corner of the original tune or uncover a new perspective. Take Monk’s “Locomotive”: it originally chugged along at a medium bounce, less “Powerhouse” than “The Little Engine that Could.” Beasley slows the tempo and whisks us onto an elegant mountain railway trip, new vistas newly visible through the panoramic windows.

Or take one of his own compositions, the flashy “Steve-O.” It debuted in the early 90s as a deep-souled Afro-Cuban romp for piano trio; nearly three decades later, it re-emerges as a rollicking big-band excursion into off-kilter funk, with short day trips to classic big-band swing. Beasley slathers the whole thing in hothouse colors, from with the blatty blasts and trumpet taunts that anchor the introductory bass riff to the riotous horn writing that ushers closes out the piano solo. It may be the same song, but it’s hardly the same old tune.

Beasley fills the canvas even with smaller groups. His MONK’estra Septet captures the muscular lightning of Sam Rivers’ ensemble writing; “Masekela” incorporates the sunny melodicism and tight horn harmonies of South African superstar Hugh Masekela”; and on “Five Spot,” Beasley memorializes the legendary New York jazz club, with his update on the hard-bop bands that flourished there. “Be.YOU.tiful” drops the horns entirely, using electric piano – and the talents of his old rhythm-mates, John Patitucci and Vinnie Colauita – to catch the aura of Wayne Shorter.

Although Beasley the composer takes center stage, Monk makes his presence felt nonetheless, plunking a dissonance here, whistling a mordant there, displacing a rhythm when nobody’s looking. The melody of “Implication” drips with Monkish mystery, and you’ll find him in the angular twists and turns of “Steve-O”; he even makes a cameo on a tune far from the monastery, on “Song for Dub,” as Beasley quotes from “Trinkle Tinkle” in his solo.

Of course, Monk’s compositions – the raison d’etre for this band – shine as brightly as they did on previous MONK’estra albums. Beasley complexifies “Monk’s Mood” with roiling bass and drums beneath the placid surface, augmented by Gregoire Maret’s lambent harmonica and virtuosic improvisation. “Off Minor” gets an update, too, with the section writing simmering atop the hip conga work and insinuative backbeat. And Beasley really pulls out the stops for “Rhythm-a-Ning,” recasting it in the garb of 1940s Ellingtonia, right down to the descending piano line and subsequent horn echoes liberally lifted from the Ellington band’s famous recordings of “Rockin’ in Rhythm.”

In an old music joke, “The concert featured John Dokes playing Beethoven. Dokes lost,” but that’s not the case here. On this album, the MONK’estra plays Beasley – who plays with the music of Monk and others, as well as his own – and it’s win-win-win all the way.

NEIL TESSER