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The Genius of Modern Music, Thelonious Monk on Blue Note (1947 - 1950)
by Russell Perry
(If the Mixcloud player for this program is unavailable in your country, please scroll down and listen via Soundcloud.) In 1940, Minton's Playhouse on West 118th Street hired drummer Kenny Clarke as a bandleader. For the house band, Clarke hired trumpeter Joe Guy, bassist Nick Fenton, and an eccentric pianist named Thelonious Monk. Although Monk recorded with Coleman Hawkins in 1944, he didn't record with his own group until 1947. Despite these kind of gaps that occur ...
Continue ReadingBrother Thelonious Re-Released At California North Coast Jazz and Ale House
by Arthur R George
"Brother Thelonious," an ale named in tribute to pianist Thelonious Monk using a Belgian Trappist brew style, is flowing again out of the North Coast Brewing Company in Fort Bragg, California and its jazz-devoted performance venue, The Sequoia Room. An intermission in production occurred after a dispute between North Coast Brewing and the Estate of the late Thelonious Monk, now resolved, over the use of Monk's image promoting the ale and related products. The Estate, represented by Monk's son drummer ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk Revisited
by Ludovico Granvassu
Thelonious Monk once said “play what you want and let the public pick up on what you are doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years." Luckily, he lived long enough to become fully embraced and celebrated before his passing. However, it's after his death that his music has really become central to the jazz canon. To mark the thirty-seventh anniversary of his demise, on 17 February 1982, this week we feature a very diverse range of renditions ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Mønk
by Ian Patterson
There is certainly no shortage of Thelonious Monk live albums--there are several dozen, in fact--but not too many such recordings have been rescued from a skip, as seems to be the case with this long-lost tape of Monk from a 1963 concert at Odd Fellow Palaeet, Copenhagen. Lovingly restored by Gearbox Records, the recording finds Monk with long-term collaborator Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone and a cooking rhythm section of double bassist John Ore and drummer Frankie Dunlop. It is, ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Mønk
by Chris May
Summer 2018 has seen the release of previously unknown recordings by two giants of mid-twentieth century jazz. First we had John Coltrane's Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album (Impulse!), and now Thelonious Monk's live album Mønk. Both discs were made in 1963. The breathless hyperbole which greeted the Coltrane was unjustified, if predictable, but the album is nonetheless a valuable addition to the archive. The Monk is, quite simply, among the pianist's strongest quartet recordings. Mønk was ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Mønk
by Karl Ackermann
Closely following the release of John Coltrane's Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album (Impulse!, 2018), this year brings us another previously unreleased gem from the golden age of jazz. The status of Thelonius Monk in the early 1960s, is indisputable and this recently discovered session recorded at a live performance in Copenhagen's Old Fellow Palæet, in 1963 validates the pianist's standing. The engineers at the UK's Gearbox Records undertook a painstaking process to restore and master the original tapes, ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk Inside Out: A Fresh Perspective On His Music
by Victor L. Schermer
Over the years, Thelonious Monk has resided in our collective minds and hearts like the extra-terrestrial “E.T." or Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, or some such alien figure whom we don't fully understand yet love and enjoy. His music shocks and disturbs us, yet we take great pleasure in it like a jolting ride at an amusement park. Monk's eccentric way of playing disrupts our equilibrium, yet it attracts us by its charm and wit. Musicians immerse themselves ...
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