Bobby Broom was a young teenager when he first heard Thelonious Monk’s piano playing

Bobby Broom was a young teenager when he first heard Thelonious Monk’s piano playing. He had a copy of Bird and Diz, the classic 1950 album on which Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were joined by Monk, Curly Russell, and Buddy Rich. Within a few years, while attending New York’s fabled High School of Music and Art during the mid-’70s, Bobby was playing some of Monk’s compositions.

“His classic tunes, like ‘Straight, No Chaser,’ ‘Well, You Needn’t,’ and ‘’Round Midnight,’ are required,” the guitarist says. “There are about five or six of them that you must play. They’re part of the jazz canon. Aside from that, I adore both his music and personal style. He is such an important figure in jazz across the board, as a player, a composer, and a soloist.”

Bobby Broom Plays for Monk, the Chicago-based musician’s latest release on the Origin Records label, features him performing eight of the legendary pianist’s compositions, along with two popular standards ”Harry Warren’s “Lulu’s Back in Town” and Jerome Kern’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” that were part of Monk’s repertoire. The guitarist is joined by Dennis Carroll, his bassist for the past 18 years, and by Kobie Watkins, his drummer for the past seven.
 
“I was trying to maintain the essence and the spirit of the music and do so without replicating idiosyncrasies of his playing, or being too overly concerned with making chord voicings sound exactly like he did,” Broom says of the CD. “I’m more interested in capturing the spirit of the music and doing it in the spirit that I and my musicians bring to it. I think we all share a similar jazz perspective with Monk. So that was the most important thing to me” finding a way to convey a natural common ground.”

Complete on http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=11903


Chicago's Bobby Broom Trio, with Kobie Watkins (drums) and Dennis Carroll (bass), playing "D's Blues" in a music video produced and directed by Mark Haynes.