Jazz Articles about Thelonious Monk

About Thelonious Monk

Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Read "Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 1, 2017

There's a purity and innocence in the music of pianist/composer Thelonious Monk. But a subtle complexity colored his tunes, masked by an enchanting approach-ability. You hear “Bemsha Swing," “Well You Needn't," “In Walked Bud," and the melodies won't leave your head; they soak into your neural circuitry, permanently. Monk emerged in the late forties with a series of 78 rpm discs collected into two volumes of The Genius of Modern Jazz (Blue Note Records, 1952). He recorded for ...

Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Read "Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 29, 2017

It's nearly impossible to underestimate the importance of the discovery of the tapes Thelonious Monk made for the French film Les Liasons Dangereuses 1960. Recorded in New York in July 1959, the session, although used in the film, was filed away for some 55 years. Recovered and remastered, we hear not only the soundtrack, but alternate takes and Monk rehearsing his band. Monk had never scored a soundtrack, but was convinced by the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter to ...

Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Read "Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
April 9, 2017

The magnitude of archival material in jazz music is enormous and overflowing as basements and attics are full with unreleased materials, outtakes and alternate versions by various artists. It's such a medium where recordings used to be made in a matter of few days. Over the years, most or some of that material has found its place on numerous deluxe or anniversary reissues or exclusive content for various box sets. It's a very rare occurrence when a material that was ...

Lyrics

Things We Like: Thelonious Monk

by Libero Farnè
March 15, 2017

All'interno delle stagioni di Angelica a Bologna, è giunto alla decima edizione il ciclo di filmati “Voci dall'al di là." Curato da Walter Rovere, fin dall'origine ha avuto come logo l'emblematica immagine dell'incontro fra i sorridenti John Cage e Sun Ra. Nell'anno in cui si celebra il centenario della nascita di Thelonious Monk non poteva mancare un documentario su di lui: “American Composer" di Matthew Seig, edito nel 1991 ma, come sostengono gli organizzatori, presentato solo ora in prima italiana. ...

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Genius Guide to Jazz

The Loneliest Monk

by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
October 11, 2015

This article was first published in August 2005. This is an apocryphal story. During Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign, he was doing an interview with supposed intellectual, Tabitha Soren of MTV. Soren asked him if there was anything he dreamt of doing. Clinton replied that he had always wanted to play sax with Thelonious Monk. Soren screwed on her best smart-girl face and replied, “And who was the loneliest monk?" At the current rate of production, ...

Book Review

Giorgio Rimondi: Nerosubianco

by Angelo Leonardi
April 14, 2015

Nerosubianco Giorgio Rimondi 143 Pagine ISBN: 978-8862317689 Arcana 2015 L'analisi sulla capacità del medium fotografico di “rappresentare" la realtà e influire sulla sfera personale e sociale ha registrato i contributi -anche molto diversi ma tutti importanti -di Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Marshall McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard e Susan Sontag. Il nuovo libro di Giorgio Rimondi Nerosubianco -Fenomenologia dell'immaginario jazzistico costruisce un'affascinante narrazione a partire da alcune fotografie che hanno come oggetto protagonisti ...

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Building a Jazz Library

Thelonious Monk

by Chris M. Slawecki
March 8, 2015

Thelonious Sphere Monk is one of the true great jazz originals. Monk's family moved from North Carolina to New York City while he was still an infant. He began piano lessons around age 12, playing Harlem rent parties then graduating to Harlem clubs such as Minton's Playhouse. Monk often played with Dizzy Gillespie and Coleman Hawkins through the early 1940s. As Minton's house pianist, Monk was entrenched as THE bebop pianist: At Minton's, with Gillespie, Charlie ...