Studio Playlist: May 2025
- peter etherington
- May 1
- 3 min read
Esbjörn Svensson Trio Plays Monk - 1996 - Esbjörn Svensson
A bold, opinion-splitting jazz icon covered by a bold, genre-crossing trio. What could go right? In my opinion, everything.
In his lifetime, Esbjörn Svensson became a low-key jazz superstar, but he also explored electronica and other far-out sounds. This album sees his trio plant their feet firmly in jazz soil to pay homage to jazz great Thelonious Monk.
Monk's staccato piano playing style has divided critics since he slid onto the scene in the late 1930s. And while his music isn't easy listening, his sound is wildly inventive and continues to inspire musicians decades after his death. This album is Esbjörn Svensson's take on some of Monk's best-known tunes, and it serves to make the jazz legend's arrangements more accessible for the average listener (like me).
This is the second month in a row that I've featured a musician who died tragically young. Esbjörn Svensson was only 44 when a diving accident claimed his life. Thelonious Monk, on the other hand, had a long and fruitful music career, so there was plenty for Svensson's trio to draw upon. Their choices and interpretations are, to my ear, masterful.
From the moment I picked this CD out of the rack at HMV over fifteen years ago, it has never left my side.
It opens with a laconic and spellbinding take on I Mean You, and I remember exactly where I was when I heard its brushy drum strokes and chilling strings for the first time.
If I close my eyes, I'm back there: flat-sitting at my dad's, setting up to cook dinner for friends.
Knives out. Wine chilling. CD in the Sony. Press play. Calm. Everything was going to be fine. And it was. We poured Lynch Bages 1988 that night, but Chapel Down Blanc de Blancs 2000 stole the show, served alongside scampi tails with dill mayonnaise.
While I'm reminiscing, my grandad, Ray, was a jazz aficionado who left a vast record collection that I'm not even close to getting my head around. When he passed in 2020, I emailed his favourite radio show, BBC Jazz Record Requests, and asked for I Mean You to be played in his honour. Broadcasting great Alyn Shipton granted my wish and five years later it is still a poignant moment.
Although, for the record, my grandad didn't particularly care for Thelonious Monk and probably wouldn't have been bowled over by Esbjörn Svensson's take either. He would've been very polite about it though.
Plays Monk is a mix of up-tempo, drum-driven jazz blended with introspective, string-laced arrangments. Svensson's piano sits at the centre but isn't always the focal point. Dan Berglund's upright bass twangs and thumps with clarity and poise, and Magnus Öström's drums push the music forward to pursue a tempo that is sometimes missing in Monk's originals. Both steal the stage at times, but never the show.
Released in 1996, the sound is timeless and hasn't aged a bit. I don't think it ever will. Most importantly, it is a beautiful album that I come back to time and time again. I don't think I ever won't.
Bottom Line: This is the kind of jazz you can play in the background while doing something else, like driving or cooking, but it is deserving of your full attention if you can spare it. And if you've failed to click with Thelonious Monk in the past, Esbjörn Svensson Trio Plays Monk may well unlock the door. Whether you choose to enter is up to you.
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