On the album, Riley is joined by saxophonists Bruce Williams, Jimmy Greene, Wayne Escoffery, and Jay Brandford, trumpeter Don Sickler (who also provided the arrangements), guitarist Freddie Bryant, and double bassists Kiyoshi Kitagawa and Peter Washington.

[1][2][3][4] Nate Chinen of The New York Times described the album as "warm and thoughtful," and wrote: "On more than a few tunes a four-part horn section spells out the jangly or cascading lines that Monk regularly played, and the effect is refreshing: what had become a mannered pianism manages to sound smart, as voiced for a trumpet and three saxophones...

'"[1] In a review for PopMatters, Robert R. Calder commented: "The idea of Monk performances by a piano-less ensemble... would only be remarkable... if the music had been closely Monkian in ways this set for the most part simply isn't.

"[6] Dan Ouellette of Billboard remarked: "While Monk's repertoire has been covered exhaustively since his passing, these versions shed a new celebratory light on the maestro's unique harmonic universe without straightening the twists and turns of the original performances.

[9] The Santa Barbara Independent's Josef Woodard featured the album in his 2006 "Baker's Dozen," writing: "Monk's old drummer revisits his boss/colleague's towering songbook, in an intriguing piano-less septet format, with ear-massaging results.