Thelonious Monk's "Monk Session I" in Amiens

By the 1960s, Thelonious Monk—the American pianist and composer behind dozens of beloved jazz standards—had finally made a name for himself in the international spotlight, after several decades toiling away in the New York music scene, where his "difficult" music he received little mainstream recognition despite significant critical acclaim.

Here he is joined by Charlie Rouse (saxophone), Larry Gales (bass), and Ben Riley (percussion) for a live session at the Maison de la Culture in Amiens, and treats the audience to several of his iconic songs including "Blue Monk", arguably his most-recorded composition, and "Crepuscule with Nelly," a landmark through-composed piece with no improvisation, which Monk biographer Robin Kelley has described as a love song for his wife Nellie and essentially a "concerto, if you will...he wrote it very, very carefully and very deliberately and really struggled to make it sound the way it sounds."