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Jazz Articles about Thelonious Monk

About Thelonious Monk

962

Old, New, Borrowed and Blue

Four In One: Monk From Four Different Angles

by Dan Bilawsky
February 18, 2010

Superstitions tend to hold sway over many, otherwise, rational people. Plenty of us avoid walking under ladders, knock on wood and partake in countless other rituals that, while lacking in sound reasoning, certainly make us feel better and bring us comfort in our daily lives. Brides-to-be even fall into this category and believe that it will bring them luck to wear something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue on their wedding day.While each of ...

237

Book Review

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

by Russ Musto
December 19, 2009

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original Robin D.G. Kelley Free Press ISBN: 0684831902 2009 This is an authoritative tome that pulls aside, without completely lifting, the shroud of mystery that has long surrounded one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of jazz. Exhaustively researched over a period of more than a decade, Kelley, who spoke with nearly every one of his subject's living relatives, friends and colleagues, ...

334

Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Thelonious Monk

Read "Thelonious Monk" reviewed by Chris Kompanek

by Chris Kompanek
December 10, 2009

The remastered Monk is actually two mini-sets melded into one with the first quintet consisting of the underrated trumpeter Ray Copeland, tenor saxophonist Frank Foster and bassist Curly Russell, with the legendary Art Blakey holding it all together on drums. These first four tracks (including a beautiful rendition of the Jerome Kern classic “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes") are upbeat and decidedly lighter in tone. This half ends with a masterfully syncopated solo by Blakey on the jaunty “Hackensack," named ...

998

Shrinktunes

The Definitive Monk Bio: So, Was He Crazy, or What?

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
November 2, 2009

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, by Robin D. G. Kelley, was published in the fall of 2009. It arrived surrounded by buzz that, since the author had unprecedented access to the Monk family, he could finally answer those lingering questions about his “mental illness"--as in, was Thelonious schizophrenic, bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, or something else? The book is dense, with 588 pages of meticulous detail. After a few chapters I decided to scan ...

819

Book Review

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

by Larry Reni Thomas
October 29, 2009

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original Robin D.G. Kelley Free Press ISBN: 0684831902 2009 Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original is a meticulously documented, yet easy-to-read chronicle of the roller coaster life of pianist and composer Thelonious Monk. It took Robin Kelley, a professor of History and American Studies at The University of Southern California, 14 years to complete, and is a sometimes humourous, but often ...

655

Profile

Thelonious Monk: Pianists Riff on Monk

by George Kanzler
October 12, 2009

This month, over a dozen pianists will participate in a free concert, Thelonious Monk at 92, at the World Financial Center in lower Manhattan. Seven of them, and two other pianists with an abiding interest in Monk, answered questions about Monk's music and more specifically, his piano playing, as influence and inspiration. Jazz pianists may disagree about whether or not Thelonious Monk was the “high priest" of bebop who, in Geri Allen's words, “set the tone for ...

506

Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Thelonious Himself

Read "Thelonious Himself" reviewed by Stuart Broomer

by Stuart Broomer
January 18, 2009

When producer Orrin Keepnews undertook this album for Riverside in 1957, Thelonious Monk had recorded relatively little as a solo pianist--nine tracks for French Vogue in 1954 and single tracks on Prestige and Riverside LPs. While the Vogue had emphasized Monk's originals and the single tracks were all old tunes, Thelonious Himself (Riverside/OJC, 1957) balanced his unique approach to standards with striking performances of originals. Whether fragmented, dissonant or oddly hesitant, Monk's probing (the usage is literal, heard in the ...