I'm back again just to let you know that I've started listening to Thelonious Monk after work, since I read this post. Not that I was completely unfamiliar with his music ... when at high school / grammar school / gymnasium (?) I was soppingly in love with a girl ... we kept in touch after graduation, she lived down the street from me ... and then she hooked up with a fucking psychopathic jazz pianist that I so much wanted to punch in the throat ... they (she was from a wealthy family -- I did not know that at the time) started a jazz club down town ... called Blue Monk.
Many years have passed and I'm able to listen to this very inventive music with great pleasure. Thank you for the reminder!
That is terrific! I am so pleased. Clearly, Monk was an extraordinary individual. In a wonderful obituary (Monk died in 1982 aged 64), Whitney Balliett wrote that he ... "... was an utterly original man who liked to pretend he was an eccentric. Indeed, he used eccentricity as a shield to fend off a world that he frequently found alien, and even hostile. A tall, dark, bearish, inward-shining man, he wore odd hats and dark glasses with bamboo frames when he played. His body moved continuously. At the keyboard, he swayed back and forth and from side to side, his feet flapping like flounders on the floor. While his sidemen soloed, he stood by the piano and danced, turning in slow, genial circles, his elbows out like wings, his knees slightly bent, his fingers snapping on the after-beat. His motions celebrated what he and his musicians played: Watch, these are the shapes of my music. His compositions and his playing were of a piece. His improvisations were molten Monk compositions, and his compositions were frozen Monk improvisations."
I'm back again just to let you know that I've started listening to Thelonious Monk after work, since I read this post. Not that I was completely unfamiliar with his music ... when at high school / grammar school / gymnasium (?) I was soppingly in love with a girl ... we kept in touch after graduation, she lived down the street from me ... and then she hooked up with a fucking psychopathic jazz pianist that I so much wanted to punch in the throat ... they (she was from a wealthy family -- I did not know that at the time) started a jazz club down town ... called Blue Monk.
Many years have passed and I'm able to listen to this very inventive music with great pleasure. Thank you for the reminder!
That is terrific! I am so pleased. Clearly, Monk was an extraordinary individual. In a wonderful obituary (Monk died in 1982 aged 64), Whitney Balliett wrote that he ... "... was an utterly original man who liked to pretend he was an eccentric. Indeed, he used eccentricity as a shield to fend off a world that he frequently found alien, and even hostile. A tall, dark, bearish, inward-shining man, he wore odd hats and dark glasses with bamboo frames when he played. His body moved continuously. At the keyboard, he swayed back and forth and from side to side, his feet flapping like flounders on the floor. While his sidemen soloed, he stood by the piano and danced, turning in slow, genial circles, his elbows out like wings, his knees slightly bent, his fingers snapping on the after-beat. His motions celebrated what he and his musicians played: Watch, these are the shapes of my music. His compositions and his playing were of a piece. His improvisations were molten Monk compositions, and his compositions were frozen Monk improvisations."
A craftsman, like you..
Hahaahahah!! What an ending to the story :-) And what a marvellous response from her father.