Thelonious Monk Monk's Music

"35 Essentials Of Thelonious Monk" is a collection recordings of Thelonious Monk compiles from the archives of Bibliothèque nationale de France…

Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser", "Ruby, My Dear", "In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't". Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington. Monk's compositions and improvisations feature dissonances and angular melodic twists and are consistent with his unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of switched key releases, silences, and hesitations. His style was not universally appreciated; the poet and jazz critic Philip Larkin dismissed him as 'the elephant on the keyboard'.

On the 1958 recording "Misterioso", jazz legend Thelonious Monk leads a star-studded quartet that features tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik. The upbeat masterwork with divine synergy is filled with gorgeous solos showcasing each musician’s technical assurance and musical genius. The centerpiece on the album is the title track, arguably one of Monk’s greatest compositions.

Rare and wonderful recording featuring the Monk Quartet (Charlie Rouse, Butch Warren and Frankie Dunlop). This is a must for jazz enthusists.

Straight, No Chaser is an album by jazz musician Thelonious Monk, released in 1967. The album was reissued on SACD, including restored versions of previously abridged performances and three additional tracks.

In 2020, the release of a late-era Thelonious Monk live show recorded at a high school by a custodian may seem like, at best, a historical curio or, at worst, the very epitome of barrel-scraping. But from the first moments of this 45-minute set, it's clear that this unique recording has far more going for it than its provenance or its rarity. But, to be sure, both the provenance and rarity of the recording are worth noting: In the heightened, revolution-ready atmosphere of 1968, a senior at an affluent and predominantly white high school bringing a jazz legend to campus seems like an absurd idea, but this senior was Danny Scher, and this wasn't even the first jazz gig he booked at Palo Alto High (he brought in Cal Tjader during his junior year and would book Duke Ellington a few months after this Monk show). Scher would go on to work for more than two decades with concert promoter Bill Graham, but in 1968, he was a driven and passionate young jazz fan who didn't take no for an answer.

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk is a studio album released in 1958 by Atlantic Records.

The genius of pianist and composer Thelonious Monk is unassailable. Since his death in 1982, he has become recognized as one of the greatest composers of jazz – and of the wider world of music. The year 2017 was the centennial of Monk’s birth, and brought scores of tributes, including a well-received stay of pianist Frank Kimbrough’s quartet at the Jazz Standard club in New York City.

The best week of the young composer/arranger Miho Hazama’s life was a hectic one. In 2011, she was invited as one of eight arrangers from around the world to take part in the famed Metropole Orkest’s residency program, led by the legendary Vince Mendoza. There were master classes and rehearsals all week for arrangements the residents would write, in four days, to be performed by the Big Band conducted by Mendoza and featuring vocalist Roberta Gambarini.