May Is For MonK

Monk Project Continues with Orrin Keepnews

There are a few things that can be stated definitively about jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk: he was born on October 10, 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina; he was house pianist at Harlem nightclub Minton’s Playhouse during the nascent days of the bebop revolution; and his recordings and compositions comprise one of the most influential bodies of work in jazz history. Yet even in seemingly obvious statements like these, fissures appear. Like his music, Thelonious Monk the artist is both defiantly direct and elusive.

Orrin Keepnews

Take bebop for example. Monk has long been grouped with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in a holy trinity of bebop innovators. Yet, listening to his playing, the musical connection is not always apparent. As producer, label head, and archivist Orrin Keepnews noted in a recent interview with SFJAZZ, while Monk was involved with Bird and Diz, along with many other influential bebop musicians, he never identified with the label.

“At the time, there were two kinds of jazz: the old music (swing bands, Dixieland) and new music,” Keepnews said. “Bebop was used indiscriminately for everything new that was going on. It was a heavy oversimplification. Originally it seemed nice and pat to talk about these three men who put this thing together. Monk was far too much of an individual to really be comfortably a member of a school. He was far more someone who was involved in extending or updating a tradition than he was a revolutionary, tearing everything down.”

Keepnews, the featured guest at tomorrow night’s SFJAZZ Members Listening Party, gained insight into Monk during his tenure as founder /producer of Riverside Records. After signing Monk to the label—an entertaining story he tells in his highly recommended (yet, sadly, out of print)The View From Within—Keepnews entered the studio as a neophyte producer to face the notoriously difficult Monk.

“The analogy that I have used is the best way to teach a child to swim is to throw him into the deep end of the pool,” Keepnews said. “If he doesn’t drown, he knows how to swim. We were aware that there were problems involved in trying to sell him to the public. We went in with a definite plan: having him work with standard material. Do a trio record to begin with. Let’s see what we can do to help the listener get past the barriers.”

That record, Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, grew out of Keepnews’ perception of the pianist as someone who, like Jelly Roll Morton and Ellington, “was a piano player, bandleader and a composer, using his band to interpret his material.” Viewed this way, Monk’s later Town Hall Concert with a 10 piece band makes more sense than it might have at the time.

“There had been big bands – Dizzy Gillespie had big bands at the beginning of the bebop period. The mere idea of modern jazz for big band is not revolutionary as such. But bebop was essentially a small-band music. And for somebody like Monk, who had previously worked only in quartet and quintet situations, it was a radical departure.” According to Keepnews, the complex seven-horn arrangements forced those that conceived of Monk as a primitive player to reevaluate their opinion.

The Town Hall concert continues to provide a fresh perspective on Monk’s compositions. As part of a co-commission by SFJAZZ and Duke University, pianist Jason Moran will reinterpret the Town Hall concert this Spring, on May 19. Then, this fall, Moran will return with an all-new composition, inspired by Monk’s legendary concert. “It’s much larger than a tribute project,” he told the Boston Globe. “Monk is the reason I started playing piano. I owe him all the investigation I can do.”

Another modern jazz master tackling Monk’s music this spring is Joshua Redman, with his original quartet mates pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Brian Blade. Though both their weekend shows are sold out, Redman and his new acoustic trio will perform on June 2 with another Bay-based Monk tribute group, “Plays Monk,” featuring drummer Scott Amendola, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, and bassist Devin Hoff.

Hoff sums up Monk’s music “one of the greatest bodies of creative work produced anywhere in the 20th century, and a pinnacle in the history of American art. Monk's songs are condensed compositions that function as riddles, as lessons, and above all as vibrant, swinging music.”