This LP allowed the pianist to stretch out as a player and a bandleader. The performances have an unhurried quality, allowing Monk’s percussive chords to dance around with unassuming grace. And his band is well-drilled: John Coltrane’s name didn’t appear on the cover, but you can hear the pianist calling out to him for the first sax solo on “Well You Needn’t.” The result shows how Trane had absorbed Monk’s style—modernist abstraction with memorable motifs.