![]() ![]() ![]() Much of Monk's style (in the Harlem stride tradition) was developed while he performed at Minton's where he participated in after-hours cutting contests, which featured many leading jazz soloists of the time. In the early to mid-1940s, he was the house pianist at Minton's Playhouse, a Manhattan nightclub. At 17, Monk toured with an evangelist, playing the church organ, and in his late teens he began to find work playing jazz. Monk put his first band together at the age of 16, snagging a few restaurant and school gigs. The lessons were discontinued when it became clear that Monk's main focus was jazz music. Monk learned to play pieces by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, and Mozart, but was particularly drawn to the works of Chopin and Rachmaninoff. įor two years, between about the ages 10 to 12, Monk's piano teacher was Austrian-born Simon Wolf, a pianist and violinist who studied under Alfred Megerlin, the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. He attended Stuyvesant High School, a public school for gifted students, but did not graduate. Monk's mother also taught him to play some hymns, and he would sometimes accompany her singing at church. Monk started playing the piano at the age of six, taking lessons from a neighbor, Alberta Simmons, who taught him stride playing in the style of Fats Waller, James P. ![]() In 1922, the family moved to the Phipps Houses, 243 West 63rd Street, in Manhattan, New York City the neighborhood was known as San Juan Hill because of the many African-American veterans of the Spanish–American War who lived there (urban renewal displaced the long-time residents of the community, who saw their neighborhood replaced by the Amsterdam Housing Projects and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, though the Phipps Houses remained). His brother, Thomas, was born in January 1920. His birth certificate spelled his first name as "Thelious" and did not list his middle name, taken from his maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts. His sister, Marion, had been born two years earlier. Thelonious Sphere Monk was born on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious (or Thelious) and Barbara Monk. Monk is one of five jazz musicians to have been featured on the cover of Time (the others being Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, and Wynton Marsalis). He also had an idiosyncratic habit during performances: while other musicians continued playing, Monk would stop, stand up, and dance for a few moments before returning to the piano. Monk's distinct look included suits, hats, and sunglasses. 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. Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington. 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". Thelonious Sphere Monk ( / θ ə ˈ l oʊ n i ə s/, Octo – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. ![]()
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