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Jazz Articles about Thelonious Monk
Solo Monk: A Poem By Steve Kowit
by AAJ Staff
One day back in the '60s, Monk was sitting at the piano, Charlie Mingus pulling at his coat how Monk should put the word in so the Mingus group could play the Five Spot, seeing as how Monk's already legendary gig down there was ending--Mingus all persuasion & cajolery, ran it down for twenty minutes till he capped it with the comment: ..."Dig it, Thelonious, you know we Black Brothers ...GOT to ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Celebrating 75 Years Of His First Recordings Revisited
by Chris May
Another stone resurrection from the Swiss-based ezz-thetics label, Celebrating 75 Years Of His First Recordings Revisited collects 23 of the tracks Thelonious Monk recorded for Blue Note between 1947 and 1952, remastered by ezzthetics' sonic jedi Michael Brändli at Hardstudios in Winterthur. Situated north of Zurich, Winterthur is Switzerland's equivalent of Silicon Valley and Hardstudios looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. The audio quality Brändli achieves there for ezz-thetics' has been raved about many times on these pages. ...
Continue ReadingArt Blakey's Jazz Messengers: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk (Deluxe Edition)
by Chris May
Rhino's new series of reissues of historic albums from the late 1950s/early 1960s hit the ground running in 2020 with John Coltrane's Giant Steps (Atlantic, 1960). Spring 2022 has already seen Charles Mingus' Trio (Jubilee, 1957) and Coltrane's My Favorite Things (Atlantic, 1961). Hot on their heels comes Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk (Alantic, 1958). Each reissue is a double disc. Disc one contains the original album. Disc two comprises outtakes, some previously ...
Continue ReadingMONK! Thelonious, Pannonica, and the Friendship Behind a Musical Revolution
by William H. Snyder
Introduction A butterfly met a monk in 1954. In the wake of an almost 30 year friendship they left behind some of the best music of the 20th century—Thelonious Monk the creator, Pannonica de Koenigswarter an enabler. The story of their friendship has been told before, but never quite in this way. Youssef Daoudi is the author-illustrator of a 2018 genre-bending historical graphic novel. If you know the story don't let it stop you from reading Daoudi's work; it is ...
Continue ReadingGot Live—Do You Want It?
by Patrick Burnette
Four live records turn up on the boys' plates—of which do they happily partake? The sessions range in recording dates from the late 1960's to the 2010's, but three of the four came out in the last few months. We talk about a listener-suggested album of “modern" stride piano, a scorching modal date that left the tape in tatters, a recently discovered live appearance from the dean of off-kilter piano and a series of charming duets by two musicians of ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: A Thriving Legacy
by Doug Hall
If legendary jazz musicians were collected together in one giant jigsaw puzzle and each musician was one piece—Thelonious Monk's individual piece would be impossible to cut out. As a singular artist, his shape or place in jazz is too uniquely non-conforming. From a musical and historical standpoint, he is recognized as one of the first creators of modern jazz and a major influence on the later development of the bebop movement. He influenced all its key players, along ...
Continue ReadingTributes to Monk, Part 1
by Russell Perry
Although he has been gone for nearly 40 years, and it has been much longer since he stopped writing, no composer of modern jazz has garnered more attention from his fellow musicians than Thelonious Monk, whose work is the subject of a continuous stream of tribute recordings. Groups as diverse as the Bobby Broom Trio, the Microscopic Septet and John Beasley & MONK'estra have assembled releases from their favorite compositions, but Miles Okazaki, in a solo set, and the Frank ...
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