MONK LIBERATION FRONT
First heard at the 2003 London Jazz Festival, the Monk Liberation Front played a 6-hour set featuring all 70 of Monk's compositions, including a new Monk-influenced composition by Philip Clark. Band members include saxophonists Tony Kofi, Ed Jones and Chris Biscoe, bassists Ben Hazleton and Jeremy Brown, and drummers Winston Clifford and James Joseph. Also appearing were Italian pianist Antonio Ciacca, Finnish trumpeter Mika Myllari and German trombonist Nils Wogrom, as well as Orphy Robinson on marimba. They performed again in July 2004 at the Rome, Terni and Vignola Jazz Festivals. The Tony Kofi Quartet was voted best ensemble at the 2005 Parliamentary Jazz Awards, and the quartet's recent release, All Is Know, was awarded jazz album of the year by the 2005 BBC Jazz Awards.
MONK LIBERATION FRONT @ 2007 LONDON JAZZ FESTIVAL: A seven-piece band featuring Jonathan Gee, Tony Kofi, Quentin Collins and Cleveland Watkiss performed the complete works of Thelonious Monk at the 2007 London Jazz Festival in three sessions across one day.
In 2017 the group reprised the much-lauded complete Monk for the London Jazz Festival at Cadogan Hall with special guest, legendary trumpeter Charles Tolliver leading his transcription of Monk's Town Hall Concert.
"Sparks always fly when Kofi and Gee get stuck into the angular sequences, but each brings different shades of meaning to Monk's raw material. The MLF is about jazz as a living art form - process rather than style - and that's a liberating way to round off this great festival." John L. Walters, The Guardian