Randy Weinstein - Harmonimonk

(Random Chance Records, 2024)

Jazz Promo Services

Besides being a groundbreaking pianist and composer, Thelonious Monk is also a fertile jumping-off point for other artists including Bud Powell, Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, Sphere, Terry Adams, Fred Hersch, Sphere, and the Microscopic Septet. Lapsteel guitarist Mike Neer’s Steelonious (Mike Neer, 2016) took Monk’s music into the instrumental wilderness in a way that was not realized again until Randy Weinstein applied his harmonica skills to seven plum Monk compositions on Harmonimonk. Weinstein has been on a Monk tear, releasing albums and singles dedicated to the composer since 2021.

These performances are not your grandparent’s Thelonious Monk to be sure. They are the product of what Weinstein was up to during the COVID pandemic and represent some of the best time spent during lockdown. Weinstein is a master of the chromatic and diatonic harmonicas, at home playing rock, blues, bluegrass, country, or jazz. When approaching Monk’s music, Weinstein did not think outside the box, he cut the tape, folded it up, and threw it away. What resulted is the freshest take on Monk’s music (or any music, for that matter). On “Bright Mississippi” Weinstein accentuates the “Sweet Georgia Brown” contrafact elements of the piece producing a blissful, almost intentional low-fidelity reading of the song. This is almost like garage jazz conceived by a mad genius who knows music well. Weinstein fashions “Off Minor” into reggae trance music and “Straight No Chaser” into a NOLA second-line march. This is innovation and imagination.