Andy Summers
Green Chimneys

Paying homage to Monk is all too easy. And, with a track here and there, or with albums entirely dedicated to him, almost everyone has done it, especially - as obvious - pianists. Here, however, the situation is unusual for many reasons: we're at the end of the nineties (a poor era: too late for real novelties, too early for genuine revivals), he is a guitarist, and above all, he is known to the world as a former policeman. And the reunion of the Policemen was still far away. Indeed: it seemed the most impossible thing in the world. If, when I bought this album, someone had told me that eight years later, I would see the Police in a stadium again, and what's more, in great shape, well, I would never, ever have believed it. Everything changes and everything has changed since then: the Delle Alpi, a very young stadium already needing refurbishment, Inter Milan as champions of Italy, the Police reunited...never take anything for granted... Nonetheless, the Police era was extremely distant, Copeland was mainly dedicated to soundtracks and sporadic appearances here and there, and Sting was churning out solo albums one after the other, each more polished and stylish than the last. He, Andy Summers, seemed to be the serious wing of the trio, the oldest, the wisest, and thus pleasantly the most estranged and indifferent to the market and its ruthless logics.
Therefore, after a handful of very particular fusion/jazz albums, where his typical "guitarism" mixed with funk/fusion rhythms, often seasoned with skillful and Latin-tinged percussive bases (or sometimes, as in ancient times, "reggae-tinged") comes the unpredictability of an album entirely dedicated to the music of the never-too-praised and lamented Thelonious. And the thing, if you think about it, is anything but bizarre. If Monk had a percussive, unpredictable pianism, often lopsided but surely extremely rhythmic, Summers, with his instrument, has similar characteristics, although naturally updated to the times and to the experiences of those who have the destiny to carry those fingers on their hand. He too has a "lopsided" phrasing (he always had it, even in the solos of the Police), he too is often pleasantly unpredictable and, above all, he too is intrinsically rhythmic. However, we are not talking about that simple rhythm, which we could call banal, that bursts in holding a simple and perhaps perfect accompanying rhythm or in phrasing the own solo by placing all the little notes in the right place at the right time, but about that rhythm which is very difficult to explain in words, which is implicit in a silence, in the infinite and very close distance between two notes or between two cuts of chords. In this, Monk and Summers are extremely similar, despite their incredibly different historical and personal backgrounds. Both seem to live for music and the rhythm of music and things in general. There is something extremely natural in the pianism of one and in the guitarism of the other, even though both can appear, and unjustly so, challenging.
Noteworthy in this album, which "sounds" fantastic in the stereo, providing great pleasures, is the always perfect rhythm of Peter Erskine, along with a luxurious cameo, namely the second of the three, that little overachiever Sting who managed to make us enjoy and irritate and make us love and hate perhaps like no other, so prone to doing great things and tiny ones, historically fundamental pairings (Gil Evans) to others to be ashamed of for life (Puff Daddy or however the hell he is called now). Here he simply does what he has to do, singing with absolutely perfect voice the most overused and perhaps most beautiful score of the great pianist, around midnight. The rest is a collection of Monk's well-known scores, and in any case, and just for this, absolutely never banal, interpreted with intelligence, mastery, originality, proper reverence but no true shyness. From a master of then and always to a master of today.