Monk was also a master at choosing sidemen on his 1957 recording Monk's Music, he placed the passionate Post Bop explorations of John Coltrane alongside the gruff proto-Swing of Coleman Hawkins. He was even known to get up and dance around the piano during his bandmates' solos. His approach was wildly diverse, encompassing harmonically dense riffing, startlingly dissonant counterpoint, and complete silence. Johnson was a neighbor) and vestiges of that idiom can be heard in his later unaccompanied solos. He was inspired by the Harlem stride pianists (James P. In larger combos, Monk was a brilliant, if erratic, accompanist. Thelonious Monk grew up in New York, started playing piano when he was around five, and had his first job touring as an accompanist to an evangelist. Outside the Bebop mainstream, Monk was busy concocting his own brew of witty, angular melodies with unorthodox and difficult chord progressions, and deeply swinging, Stride-influenced rhythm. While he played with many groups through the 1940s, it wasn't until '47 that Monk began his solo odyssey. Thelonious Sphere Monk was an iconoclast of the jazz community, a brilliant composer/pianist whose relentlessly quirky music has been putting smiles on people's faces long after his death.
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