The Thelonious Monk Quartet
Live In Amsterdam
May 1961. The Concertgebouw - Amsterdam's cathedral of classical music, where symphonies and string quartets had held court for decades - opens its doors to something entirely different. Thelonious Monk, the high priest of bebop, one of the most important and enigmatic figures in modern jazz, walks onto that hallowed stage with his quartet. The audience is packed, expectant. They have no idea what's about to happen. What happened was magic. Pure, uncut, Monkian magic. This isn't Monk as studio p…