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Tony Kofi Quartet

Plays Monk - All is Know

Specific Jazz

Description

This is the debut album as leader from one of the UK's hottest jazz properties - saxophonist Tony Kofi.

Kofi's rise through the ranks has been one of the greatest stories in the UK's jazz scene over the last 10 years.

Starting out as part of the legendary Jazz Warriors, Tony Kofi went on to work with nearly every important band on the UK scene throughout the 90s, from the acid jazz of Lonnie Smith and US3 to the searching bands of Brandford Marsalis, Julian Arguelles and David Murray.

This album (also the first release on Proper's new imprint SPECIFIC JAZZ) is the culmination of 5 years' study by Tony and the musicians associated with his Monk Liberation Front project, and heralds the arrival of this great talent as a bandleader, fully formed as a soloist and with a real A-Team rhythm section behind him (Jonathan Gee, Piano; Winston Clifford, drums; Ben Hazelton, bass plus Orphy Robinson, vibes).

The musicians take the familiar, and not-so-familiar, themes of Thelonious Monk, giving them a true contemporary feel while never losing sight of the tradition they represent. This album is going to attract attention from all areas of the jazz world.

Review

'In the dynamic new Thelonious Monk celebration [Tony Kofi] conceived with pianist Jonathan Gee, Kofi resoundingly proves that the jazz past and the present are inseparable. Today, Tony Kofi is involved in one of the most talked-about British jazz ventures of recent years... An album devoted to this bold reinvention of Monk's music is due from Proper Records, making its first departure from distribution. The music is no respectful repolishing of an inimitable giant's legacy either, but fuelled both by devotion and independent reappraisal...'

John Fordham (JazzUK)