191. Fred Hersch - Alone at the Vanguard (2011)

Hersch plays in his characteristically slick and lyrical style in this collection of live, solo recordings. The gently meandering set is just over an hour long but was culled from an entire week of performances at the Vanguard in  2010. Hersch's back catalog of superb trio records has given him all the leeway that could be expected from the trio format, but alone, he is free to wander a little farther from the yard, in both time and route, as with Sonny Rollins' "Doxy," or the elegant salute to Thelonious Monk's "Work." In the absence of the drums and bass, he develops sweeping melodic arcs in each piece, and displays refined senses of harmony and dynamics. With several numbers he tips his hat to inspiration from friends and figures like Robert Schumann, Bill Frisell, and Lee Konitz. My favorite piece is the disc's opener that I know as a favorite Frank Sinatra song (although it has been covered countless times since). "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" is rendered so poignantly as to touch the emotional depth achieved by Sinatra on the 1955 album.

47. Thelonious Monk / Solo Monk (1965)

It's Thelonious, plain and simple. Playful, snarky, diabolical. He does tunes that you know, tunes that he knows, and maybe some that only he knows. Certainly, he does them all the way he knows how -- lopsided phrasing, disjointed rhythmical constructions, boulders for punctuation marks, and a philandering left hand that's off doing who-knows-what while the right hand runs away without him. Sometimes they meet up again, and sometimes it takes an indiscriminate forearm full of notes to remind them they belong to the same piece. I used to have a job doing outsourced library cataloging, where I would wear a headset while working. Listening to this CD brought joy to my dismal occupation, which was situated in a dimly lit room without windows or a heater in the middle of winter, and it even brought a smile to my face. I recommend contrasting this with Monk's first solo set, Thelonious Himself, which was recorded for Riverside a few years earlier. This is a much livelier set, whereas on the other, Monk seems almost self consciously quiet and even reserved.