Cuneiform Records' Press Release for the album:

The late jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-82) is one of the top creative deities  in the pantheon of American Jazz Greats.  He is one of jazz’s greatest composers; Penguin Guide to Jazz  notes that Monk’s  “output ranks with that of Morton and Ellington.” Monk’s tunes, once considered radical and appreciated by only a small cognoscenti, are now beloved standards, and may well be the most frequently covered jazz tunes on recordings.  His creative brilliance continues to resonate over time; a surge of interest in the composer this year has already led some to begin calling 2010 “the Year of the Monk.”

The music of Thelonious Monk, as it escaped the windows of a Downtown New York apartment, was the catalyst that sparked the creation of one of New York’s most legendary and important jazz groups, the Microscopic Septet. Since it was founded in 1980, under the co-leadership and co-compositional duties of soprano saxophonist and composer Phillip Johnston and pianist and composer  Joel Forrester, “the Micros” have been  responsible for creating some of the most captivating and memorable original tunes and performing some of the most entertaining shows in the past 30 years of American jazz. In 1974, the Monk tune: “Well You Needn’t” first brought the future Micros co-leaders together by chance.  Johnston was living in the Bowery at the time, and Forrester, hearing music, barged into his apartment, unannounced: “I was playing a Thelonious Monk tune, and a guy I had never seen before came walking through my door, which wasn’t locked- those were the hippie days…” The encounter sparked a friendship and working relationship, in which Monk’s music reverberated on multiple levels across the years.  Another chance encounter - at chicken and ribs place West Boondock, following his performance of Monk’s “Pannonica” on the restaurant’s piano - forged Forrester’s friendship with the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. And through the Baroness, Forrester would ultimately meet and periodically play piano for Monk.

Since Johnston and Forrester’s first meeting nearly four decades ago, Monk’s music has remained an inspiration and guiding light throughout the lengthy course of their music careers. In addition to creating and playing their own music, Johnston and Forrester always played Monk’s music: as a duo, in Forrester’s quartets and large groups, and, from that band’s very beginning in 1980, with the Microscopic Septet. Micros gigs always included their arrangements of Monk tunes, but due to the Micros’ limited number of releases (5 albums) and  their copious original songbook (more than 180 tunes), they only previously recorded Forrester’s arrangement of Monk’s ‘Crepuscle For Nellie.’

The new Microscopic Septet CD released on Cuneiform,  Friday The 13th: The Micros Play Monk rectifies this omission. Featuring original arrangements of 12 Monk tunes, half from “back in the day” and half newly-written for this recording,  the Microscopic Septet make clear their line of descent from Monk.  The humor and angularity of Monk’s compositions mesh easily and joyfully with the elaboration and juxtaposition  of the Micros-style arranging.   Definitively not a dry deconstruction, this is a true celebration of Monk by a group that can arguably be called his most sensitive and sensational heirs.

Featuring gorgeous art work by New Yorker artist Barry Blitt - the man responsible for the infamous and controversial "Michelle and Barack 'fist-bump'" cover and other contentious-yet-humorous artwork, and liner notes by jazz critic and long-time Micros fan Peter Keepnews, Friday the 13th is surprising yet inevitable: a long overdue party with the master, at which The Micros Play Monk.

Friday the 13th  arrives amidst a perfect storm of works in multiple media devoted to or about Monk. Dubbed by Jazz Times as ‘Year of the Monk’, 2010 had witnessed a biographical book on Monk by Robin D. G. Kelley, a documentary film on Monk’s patron and friend, the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, called The Jazz Baroness, and several CDs of Monk tunes by various musicians.  Transcending mere tribute, the Microscopic Septet’s Friday the 13th distills Monk’s heady and humorous essence, revives his iconoclastic spirit, and revels in, and with, the creative compositions of Monk.

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Selections from Press that Friday the Thirteenth: The Micros Play Monk has received since its release:

~ click here for more press excerpts on the album~