They would come to his house and look over his shoulder, and he was always willing to share and talk music. And the heat that he took for being so different at the time - critics didn’t get him at all until later on in his life, but musicians definitely got him. But Monk’s stuff was unique even among those giants. When those guys wrote tunes, they all sounded like it was coming from the same thing. He was so completely different from the guys of his generation: Bird, Dizzy, Bud Powell. He was unique, and so courageous to write like that.
#Thelonious monk album covers tv#
John Beasley, renowned TV and film composer who will be celebrating Monk’s centennial with his Monk’estra big band at the Jazz Standard October 12–14: He was my hero and in a way the only God-like pianist I’ve ever known and had the pleasure to spend time with. (That sounds unrealistic with your new iPhones, but it was true of the time.) Monk’s touch, interchangeability, assertive quality, and plot changes were what influenced me the most, and it would be for listeners to if I’ve absorbed any of that or not. I became a fanatic finding his records, because I would wear them out every month and needed new copies. Monk’s left hand was the Earth and yesterday, and his clashing right hand was Bartók, instability, and the injustice of the current day. It brought me combustible joy, out-of-this-world trips, and a strong feeling for the past and the future. Hearing Monk’s piano playing was an emotional experience. Claude Debussy, Mahalia Jackson, and Roy Webb were my main go-tos. I was in seventh grade at the time and into spirituals, gospel, and film noir. I discovered Thelonious Monk in 1947 while passing by Music in the Round, a local record store in Springfield, Massachusetts, owned by Ben Kalman. Ran Blake, pioneering pianist, composer, and educator who debuted fifty-five years ago on RCA Victor with The Newest Sound Around and helped develop the idea of “Third Stream” music, a fusion of jazz and classical: This is the best possible example of “playing the song - not the changes.” It’s just brilliant on every possible level. It still blows my mind every single time, maybe more each time I hear it. The whole record starts with a hymn: “Abide With Me.” I didn’t know enough about jazz to realize that wasn’t normal. Not only was the music great, but I think there was some critical aspects of the music that affected everything I came to think and love about jazz, about improvising at the piano, about composing, and ultimately about music.
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I’d like to say I had superb taste, but actually I just thought I should check out “jazz,” and I liked the cover. The first record I ever bought was a Howlin’ Wolf record it was the iconic one with the rocking chair, with “Spoonful” and “Wang Dang Doodle.” The first jazz record I ever bought was Monk’s Music, the one with Coltrane and Coleman Hawkins. Wayne Horvitz, a key member of the New York City downtown-jazz scene of the Eighties and Nineties who served in John Zorn’s Naked City, among other groups:
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Their responses, which have been condensed and edited for clarity, are presented below. “It depends on your imagination.”ĭuring what would have been the week of Monk’s one hundredth birthday, a diverse spectrum of jazz pianists offered recollections on Monk’s legacy to the Voice. There have been nearly fifty Monk albums available on eight different record labels since he made his debut on Blue Note in 1947, and each LP reveals a different layer of the way his hands molded the very concept of modern jazz - one that continues to evolve today. “A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world,” Monk once told saxophonist Steve Lacy, some time in 1960. Yet while Monk’s penchant for headgear was indeed a fickle affair, the pioneering melodicism and improvisational elegance with which the New York City–bred genius played the baby grand remained a constant, defining factor - from the time he helped shape the concept of bebop during the Second World War as the house piano man at Minton’s Playhouse, to his final tour, in 1971. A look at the covers for some of his most beloved albums - The Unique Thelonious Monk, Monk’s Music, Thelonious Alone in San Francisco, Monk’s Dream, It’s Monk Time, Underground, and, most recently, the long-awaited release of his soundtrack to Roger Vadim’s controversial 1960 French film Les Liaisons Dangereuses - reveal all you need to know about the wide variety of lids that graced his brilliant brain throughout his four decades of active duty.
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Thelonious Monk (1917–1982) was a man of many hats - literally. Thelonious Monk performs in Paris in 1964.