WASHINGTON -- Hod Moshonov, a 22-year-old pianist from Israel, had already loosened his tie by 1 p.m. on Sunday, and his wine-colored dress shirt was coming loose from his waist. Super-revved, he seemed to dump his whole conception of jazz on his instrument. He leaned into the grand piano and damped the strings, playing muted percussive melodies...
Thomas F. DeFrantz, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is also, according to his program biography, ''a globally circulating artist and academic.'' In ''Monk's Mood: A Performance Meditation on the Life and Music of Thelonious Monk,'' Mr. DeFrantz, a tall, slender man with a head full of dreadlocks, aims to be a tap dancer...

THELONIOUS MONK The Life and Times of an American Original By Robin D. G. Kelley Illustrated. 588 pp. Free Press. $30 Thelonious Monk, the great American jazz artist, during the first half of his junior year at Stuyvesant High School in New York, showed up in class only 16 out of 92 days and received zeros in every one of his subjects. His mother,...
Thelonious Sphere Monk (10. oktober 1917 - 17. februar 1982) var en amerikansk jazzpianist og komponist.
Hans unikke klaverteknik, improvisationsteknik og kompositioner gjorde ham til en af jazzens mest helstøbte og originale musikere.
Som teenager spillede han i ca. 2 år sammen med en omrejsende vækkelsesprædikant. Denne tidlige forankring omkring gospeltraditionen satte sig mærkbare spor i hans musik, hvilket især kunne mærkes i hans konstante rytmiske drive.
Monk er ligeledes bemærkelsesværdig derved, at hans personlige musikalske univers fremstod fuldt færdigt allerede i 1947, da han etablerede sig som bandleder, og det forblev uændret de næste 25 år.
Selv om han i lange perioder var mentalt ustabil, så var hans enestående musikalske skaben præget af en altid krystalklar og konsekvent musikalsk logik. Fold ud