Baddest Monk, The

Pianist Eric Reed has claimed that Monk's music makes it possible "to travel way out there, if you're willing to go where it can take you." On The Baddest Monk, Reed and his colleagues prove more than willing.  The Monk classics recorded here illustrate the breadth of Reed's thought on one of the most idiosyncratic of jazz composers.  This is not another Monk tribute album, dragging out the usual suspects for another tired line-up but it is rather a vital, living and insightful re-examination of Monk, both the man and his music, as seen through the imagination of a group of sympathetic and like-minded artists.