Brandon Wozniak©Andrea Canter

“You know, anybody can play a composition and use far-out chords and make it sound wrong. It’s making it sound right that’s not easy." -- Thelonious Monk, 1961

Whether or not you are a particular fan of the often quirky music of Thelonious Monk, it’s nearly impossible to avoid his influence if you listen to jazz, live or recorded, vocal or instrumental. Even the most casual jazz listener has heard such great standards as “Round Midnight,” “Ask Me Now, Rhythmining.” Among the most serious musicians, the Monk songbook often has biblical significance, a source of inspiration for improvisers and composers.  

Although often cast as one of the founders of bebop, Monk’s style veered off in an idiocyncratic direction, his compositions marked by dissonant harmonies and angular melodic twists, while his unique, self-taught piano style featured a highly percussive attack with abrupt use of silence and hesitations. One of the greatest (and most prolific) composers of the 20th century, for many years only the most sophisticated jazz musicians, including Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane, appreciated his genius. Yet today, Monk’s compositions are part of the standard repertoire of jazz, from straight ahead to avant garde. Not only did Monk write hundreds of tunes, his off-kilter structures and rhythms offer endless avenues for interpretation regardless of stylistic leanings. 

Park Evans©Andrea Canter

Monk in Motian debuted as part of the Late at the Dakota series of weekend, after-hours performances by the area’s most cutting-edge and experimental bands.  Monk in Motian certainly qualifies on both counts. It’s core includes members of the fusion-fueled Atlantis Quartet—guitarist Zacc Harris, saxophonist Brandon Wozniak and drummer Pete Hennig, as well as their frequent collaborators guitarist Park Evans and bassist Cody McKinney. McKinney missed the debut, replaced for the evening by Jeremy Boettcher, a recent grad of the the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Boettcher was recently on the Dakota stage with the John Raymond Project, so he’s certainly had experience with innovative jazz ensembles. 

Pete Hennig©Andrea Canter

The dueling guitars of Zacc Harris and Park Evans, along with Jeremy Boettcher’s electric bass, and given the absence of a keyboard, are the purveyors of much of the motion, alternately ambient and angular, a debate among forces of acoustic and electronic, sometimes playing in unison, sometimes back and forth, sometimes in simultaneous rampage. Brandon Wozniak shifts between leading man and supporting roles, often matching the lines of one guitar or the other, otherwise adding harmonic tension or pulling at the melodic thread. That thread was most evident on the one ballad of the first set, “Ask Me Now,” one of the easily identified themes of the night. 

Zacc Harris and Jeremy Boettcher©Andrea Canter

This review originally posted on Andrea Canter’s blog at www.jazzink.blogspot.com