In the early to mid-1940s, he was the house pianist at Minton's Playhouse, a Manhattan nightclub. 1934–1946: Early performing career Īt 17, Monk toured with an evangelist, playing the church organ, and in his late teens he began to find work playing jazz. 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 pieces by 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 first violinist and 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. It also did not list his middle name, taken from his maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts. His poorly written birth certificate misspelled his first name as "Thelious" or "Thelius". Thelonious Sphere Monk was born two years after his sister Marion on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and was the son of Thelonious 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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