File:Thelonious_Monk,_Minton's_Playhouse,_New_York,_N.Y.,_ca._Sept._1947_(William_P._Gottlieb_06191).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Thelonious Monk
Sign in to saveAlso known as Thelonious Sphere Monk, Thelonious S. Monk
American jazz pianist and composer (1917–1982)
OverviewAI-generated
Thelonious Monk (1917–1982) was an American pianist, composer, and jazz musician. Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he attended Stuyvesant High School and later resided in Rocky Mount, New Jersey. His musical style encompassed jazz, bebop, hard bop, stride piano, and post-bop. He recorded for labels including Blue Note, Prestige, Columbia Records, and Riverside. Notable works include *European Tour*, *Thelonious Monk and Max Roach*, and *Thelonious Monk Favorites*.
Monk received several honors, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the Grammy Hall of Fame, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was sponsored by Pannonica de Koenigswarter and had a child named T. S. Monk. He died of natural causes in Englewood and is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery.
Synthesized by Vinony from 45 facts across 9 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, TMDb, Wikiquote, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1917
- Died
- 1982
- Works
- 29
Top works
- European Tour
- Thelonious Monk and Max Roach
- Thelonious Monk Favorites
- Thelonious Monk - Omnibook for Piano
- Thelonious Monk Play-Along
via Open Library + Wikidata
Film & TV
Acting · Rocky Mount, North Carolina, USA
Known for
- Rewind & Play — Self (archive footage)2023
- Monk & Pannonica: An American Story — Self - Jazz Musician (archive footage)2022
- Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool — Self - Musician (archive footage)2019
- Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes — Self (archive footage)2019
- It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Story — Self2018
- Thelonious Monk: Paris 19692013
- Thelonious Monk Quartet at Salle Pleyel, Paris, 1969 — Himself2012
- Public Speaking — Self (archive footage)2011
- Jazz Icons: Thelonious Monk Live in '662006
- Piano Blues — Self (archive footage)2003
via TMDB
Music · MusicBrainz
- Type
- Person
- Gender
- Male
- Origin
- United States
- Active from
- 1917
- Active to
- 1982
Discography
Member of
via MusicBrainz · CC0
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 1,111,032
- Total plays
- 19,742,693
Tags
Thelonious Sphere Monk (Rocky Mount, North Carolina 10th October 1917 - Hartsdale, New York 17th February 1982) was a jazz pianist and composer. Widely considered as one of the most important musicians in jazz -- he is one of only five jazz musicians to be featured on the cover of Time -- Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy," "'Round Midnight," "Blue Monk," "Straight No Chaser" and "Well, You Needn't." <
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- The Pittsburgh sleep quality index: A new instrument for psychiatric practice and research
· 1989 · cited 29,218x
- Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
· 2012 · cited 6,796x
- Toward discovery science of human brain function
· 2010 · cited 2,618x
- The autism brain imaging data exchange: towards a large-scale evaluation of the intrinsic brain architecture in autism
· 2013 · cited 2,514x
- Niraparib Maintenance Therapy in Platinum-Sensitive, Recurrent Ovarian Cancer
· 2016 · cited 2,191x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “I don't know where it's going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens.”
- “Which is the way to the toilet?”
- “It reminded me of , and that's got to be good. Rhythm section has the right groove, too. Drummer made me think of . Hey, play that again. (Later.) Yeah! He sounds like a piano player! (Hums theme.) You can keep changing keys all the time doing that. Sounds like something that was studied and figured out. And he can play it; you know what's happening with this one. Yeah, he was on a Bobby Timmons kick. He knows what's happening.”
- “All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.”
- “Monk enters the studio and starts playing, the rest of the musicians join him. After few minutes of play the technician from his room shouts and stops the band.]Monk: Why did we stop?Technician: I thought you were rehearsing.Monk: Aren't we always?”
- “The piano ain't got no wrong notes.”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
~32 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Thelonious Sphere Monk (/θəˈloʊniəs/ October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) 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". As of 2009, Monk was the second-most-recorded jazz composer in history, after Duke Ellington.
Monk's compositions and improvisations feature dissonances and angular melodies, often using flat ninths, flat fifths, unexpected chromatic notes, low bass notes and stride, and fast whole tone runs. His playing style combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of switched key releases, silences, and hesitations. "As a leading figure in the rhythm section of modern jazz, Thelonious Monk serves as a model for accompaniment improvisation."
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Thelonious Monk” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.