The American clarinet trio of long-time comrades – clarinetist Ben Goldberg, double bass player Todd Sickafoose and drummer-electronics player Scott Amendola – plays music inspired by the bridges (and chord changes) of Thelonious Monk compositions. Goldberg already led a trio that explored Monk’s music with Amendola and double bass player Devin Hoff (Plays Monk, Long Song, 2007), but Here to There is their debut album as a trio. For the last thirty years, Goldberg, Sickafoose and Amendola have been playing in different formats and have established a deep rapport.

This trio did not want to keep playing Monk and developed the idea of writing new pieces based on the bridges of Monk’s compositions to realize its own trio sound during its performances in 2022. Goldberg says that Monk often created aerobic A sections, and then the bridges were built on the tiniest kernel of an idea that gets extrapolated and often acts as the palette cleanser. He calls this approach an intersection of Monk and Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher.

Here to There was recorded at Gung-Ho Studio in Oregon. Sickafoose’s originals used Monk’s bridges as jumping-off, subtle but inventive ideas for the looser, conversational dynamics of the trio (check «In Walked», obviously, inspired by the bridge for «In Walked Bud», «Self Evident» based on «Evidence», «Epistrophy» led for «Sad Trophy» and «Interospection» inspired from «Introspection»).

Goldberg – in the three, short pieces of «Porch Concert Material» and the title piece, and Amendola – in the series of three brief, «Lions Heart» pieces, avoid direct references to Monk’s work. These pieces enjoy the trio’s unhurried, natural and easy but always lyrical and nuanced, telepathic interplay, and play with the bridges as «something that takes you from here to there».

Here to There offers a trio of resourceful and wise musicians who are inspired by the great legacy of Monk but not bound by it, and know how to radiate beautifully their joy of music-making.

Eyal Hareuveni

Ben Goldberg (clarinet), Todd Sickafoose (double bass), Scott Amendola (drums, electronics)