http://www.allaboutjazz.com/monk-the-lost-files-clarence-penn-origin-records-revi...chael-bailey.php
By C. MICHAEL BAILEY
A well-established creative paradigm exists to justify Clarence Penn & Penn Station's recording Monk: The Lost Files. "Classical" music is often considered that music, composed long ago, that has stood the test of time, remaining viable to the public in recordings and live performance. These composers of this music tend to be Europeans from the last Millennium. It is the only logical jump to include American jazz composers like Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and our focus here, Thelonious Monk as composers of "Classical" music.
In traditional Classical music, it is common for the performer (at least since Franz Liszt and Niccolo Paganini) to provide their personal spin on the music. Jazz, of course, takes this practice a step further in improvisation. Monk's music remains a rich loam of material from which new ideas spring from the minds of thoughtful and intelligent interpreters. Drummer Clarence Penn is such an interpreter. His approach is bold, yet respectful, not unlike Monk's himself.
Penn's approach to Monk is to challenge the composer and his compositions rhythmically, almost mathematically. Penn does not so much reharmonize Monk's material as he does re-accenting it. Penn moves the stresses in the music around. When listening to the opening "Well You Needn't" the listen will recognize Monk's craggy head, but it has been polished and made more regimented by Penn's arrangement. The remainder of the song is a dramatic updating. The bridge and soloing sections incorporate the spoken word and a Stanton Moore-like percussion environment, catalyzing a funky momentum.
"In Walked Bud" is transformed using the Fender Rhodes. Slowed down and performed with a deliberate attention to the piece's harmonic skeleton, pianist Donald Vega exposes the spirit of Monk's homage to his friend Bud Powell. An ethereal trio performance that shines like newly pressed steel. It is played as lightly as a ballad with Penn carefully outlining the rhythmic direction. Fractured are "I Mean You" and "Bemsha Swing" both featuring Chad Lefkowitz-Brown's tenor saxophone. The former is as regimented as a Jacksonian seizure while the latter takes on a relaxed post bop feel in portions. It is all Monk and all Penn.
http://www.downbeat.com/digitaledition/2015/DB1501/single_page_view/63.html
If you were unaware of Clarence Penn’s sharp, creative work with trumpeter Dave Douglas, or his years of empathetic, intelligent playing as a member of Maria Schneider’s orchestra, you could be forgiven for assuming that Monk: The Lost Files was one too many recordings of Thelonious Monk classics. Penn’s audacious interpretation of “Well You Needn’t” quickly lays any reservations to rest. All stuttering beats and slippery electronics, with some spoken word thrown in for good measure, the opening song signals the drummer’s intentions to reinterpret Monk as 21st-century material. His title alludes to a computer glitch that left him panicked, thinking he had lost the 2012 session altogether. And if that opening salvo is not enough to convince you that this is Monk like you have not heard him before, check out Donald Vega’s first non-electric piano solo on “Green Chimney.” No sooner does it start—sounding like any modern acoustic interpretation of Monk—than it is yanked away electronically, a slur of melting notes. Taking such liberties with Monk will not please purists, but Penn’s approach has solid footing: using well-known thematic riffs as cells that can be chopped up, carried by Chad Lefkowitz-Brown’s sax or Yasushi Nakamura’s bass, or simply implied. If this makes it sound like some sort of postmodern intellectual exercise, that’s not the case. In the hands of Penn’s quartet, Monk comes off sounding like dance music, in much the same way that Jason Moran re-channels Fats Waller classics. —James Hale
