Laurent de Wilde

From his very fun New Monk Trio album, released for Thelonious Monk's centennial, on which he plays with Monk's tune, revisiting the repertoire with his own reading and groovy arrangements.

Monk's Mix (Video)
Laurent de Wilde discovered that many Monk's tune can fit very well over a calipso rhythm in B-flat. Can you recognise them all?

Tune for T. (Video)
This is the only original composition on the album – and it's obviously in the style of Thelonious Monk. You have stride, swing, dissonances, weird harmonic movements (as if some progressions are going backwards), and a lot of fun!

Coming on the Hudson (Video)
The original tune is an absolutely great (but rather unkown) gem. I think that Laurent de Wilde made it even better, with his backward and extended progressions.
He explains: "Monk has an imitable way of starting to build on a harmonic movement, and then abruptly turning to something else. On this arrangement I wanted to extend the symmetric progression of the chords at the beginning so as to delay this change in direction for as long as possible. […] And the comes the bridge, a real saw going through your head; hearing it once wasn't enough for me so I made a loop of it and asked [drummer] Donald Kontomanou to improvise over it, and then other things started happening…"
I've made the (almost) full transcription + a 2-pages lead sheet for solo piano, because you'll want to play the tune even if you're alone!