Broadcast: August 21, 2022 at 4:00 p.m.
The duo on this show consists of superb pianist Hiromi Uehara, who usually goes by just Hiromi, and Edmar Castaneda, a harp player from Bogota, Colombia, who has taken the harp to new places in jazz. The two remarkable players joined each other at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, on June 30th, 2017, and an album recorded there is now available. We'll also hear them talk about getting together from some conversation available only on the Japanese edition of the album.
We'll also hear previously unreleased music from John Lee Hooker, from the centennial celebration box set "King Of The Boogie," although there is some question about whether Hooker was actually born in 1917. The songs come from a 1983 show in Berlin, and Hooker is in fine form and spirits, praising his band but also joking about how Albert King had fired band members right in the middle of a show on stage. (Hooker never did that!)
In this hour of Blue Dimensions, two centennials and a Super Duo: Thelonious Monk, John Lee Hooker, and Hiromi & Edmar Castaneda - - two special centennial releases, and a remarkable duo recording. 2017 marked the centennial of Thelonious Monk's birth, and the recent rediscovery of the tapes from the session where Monk and band recorded the music for the 1959 French film "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" has led to the first-time album issue of this music as a centennial celebration. We'll hear several tracks from this double disc. Monk did not write new music for "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" but did make excellent new recordings of some of his work, including both band and solo versions of "Pannonica," a great take of "Well, You Needn't," and "Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are," his composition for the Bolivar Hotel, where Pannonica de Koenigswarter, his great sponsor and supporter and subject of the song "Pannonica," lived.
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