Roswell Rudd, Steve Lacy, Misha Mengelberg, Kent Carter

Regeneration brings together two pairs of musicians with long histories in the music of Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols. Trombonist Roswell Rudd and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy had co-led a quartet that played only Monk tunes in New York in the early 1960s; the Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink came from the Amsterdam improvising scene. With the American bassist Kent Carter, they recorded three pieces by each composer in Milan in June 1982, and Soul Note issued the album in 1983.

The session took place on 25 and 26 June 1982 at Barigozzi Studio, with Giancarlo Barigozzi recording and Giovanni Bonandrini producing. Nat Hentoff wrote the sleeve notes. Side one is given to Nichols, a pianist whose tunes were then rarely played: Blue Chopsticks, 2300 Skiddoo and Twelve Bars. Side two turns to Monk with Monk's Mood, Friday The 13th and Epistrophy. The Lacy and Rudd partnership goes back to March 1963, when their quartet with Henry Grimes and Dennis Charles was taped at the Phase Two Coffee House in New York playing nothing but Monk, a set released only in 1975 as School Days.

This CD is SNGG003-2 in the Golden Gems series of CAM Jazz, issued on Soul Note in November 2016 with remastered audio in a card sleeve with the original colour booklet. The album first came out in 1983 as SN 1054.