![\"Stan](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Stan-Kenton-facing-right.jpg\")
<\/a>It is in the nature of creative music that the question cannot be answered. Still, it would be less than human for someone who takes jazz—or any important music—seriously, not to speculate. It is impossible to know whether the present generation of musicians in their teens and twenties includes people who will advance the evolution of jazz into an important new phase. There are certainly enough talented musicians in that age group to make tracking their progress intensely interesting and, often, rewarding. Pianist Nick Sanders and alto saxophonist Logan Strosahl are players who fit that bill. <\/p>\nTwice in the past few months, Rifftides<\/em> has posted performances from the collection of videos on Sanders\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and Strosahl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s YouTube<\/em> channel. The pair have affinity for Charlie Parker, Herbie Nichols, Billy Strayhorn and Thelonious Monk, as well as for Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and others who contributed classics to the Great American Songbook. Next in this series—if it turns out to be a series—is a Monk composition that gave the composer and his colleagues a bit of The late producer Orrin Keepnews, who produced Monk\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work for Riverside Records, recalled that it took half a day and three takes in the studio until Monk was satisfied. Before we hear young Sanders’s and Strosahl’s recent performance of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Played Twice,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d it can be instructive to listen to the take that Monk approved on that June day in 1959. The composer is at the piano, with Thad Jones, cornet; tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse in his first recording with Monk; Sam Jones, bass; and Arthur Taylor, drums. They play it rather deliberately here, which gives us an opportunity to absorb the tune\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s form and to at least sense its harmonic complexity. <\/p>\n<\/a> trouble when he first recorded it in 1959. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Played Twice,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a sixteen-bar piece that may have seemed deceptively simple on paper. <\/p>\n