Thelonious Monk Quintet feat. Steve Lacy

Reportedly, Thelonious Monk never liked his compositions being recorded by other artists. However, there were exceptions and one was Steve Lacy's Reflections, the first all-Monk-composition album recorded by someone rather Mr. Monk himself. Recorded in 1958, it also featured with Mal Waldron, Buell Neidlinger and Elvin Jones.

Whether because of the release of that or Monk's personal liking for Lacy, Monk invited him to play along his quartet in 1960. Monk had already complimented Lacy in at least one occasion: during a gig at the UN building in New York City, Jimmy Giuffre Quartet featuring Steve Lacy played opposite Thelonious Monk where they performed two  Monk's compositions. The composer almost instantly hated it, however he had some nice words in his sleeve for Lacy and right after that UN gig he invited Lacy to play with him in the Jazz Gallery. Other gigs followed in 1960.

Horace Parlan (1931-2017)

"Horace Parlan is a tall, quiet-mannered man, essentially a gentle person with virtually irremovable easy smile," wrote Leonard Feather for the liner notes of the young pianist's solo album debut.

50 years on, even some of the recent videos of Parlan, who passed away last week, shows that the "irremovable easy smile" wasn't removed until the end.

The 29-year old pianist of whom Feather highly spoke was from the city of Mary Lou Williams and Erroll Garner, but also Ahmad Jamal with whom he shared the same music teacher.

The key incident of his early life occurred at the age of 5, when his right hand was paralyzed due to a polio attack. After that opting for becoming a pianist wouldn't have been the first obvious choice but he went in that direction both because he had fallen in love with jazz by listening to Woody Herman on the radio, but also playing piano was a form of therapy for his fingers.