Conductor and composer Frank Carlberg puts together a 16 member and two voiced team to interpret the songs of Thelonious Monk. All of the songs are “originals”, but are highly inspired by specific Spheric tunes. Thus, you get some spacey ideas of “Skippy” on “Spooky Rift We Pat” with some sax soloing by Adam Kolker, while “Out of Steam” harkens to the original “ Locomotive” with Reising adding his sax to the chuggin’ train ideas. It’s fun to try to figure out just what part of Monk’s brain was picked for a song like “Scallop’s Gallop” and then you realize, “Hey! I figured it out” as Kirk Knuffke’s trumpet cries out the hints, or the tenor saxes flail on “Brake Tune”. Name that tune!