In Michael Ondaatje’s wonderful novel “Divisadero” — a most memorable part of which is set in Sonoma County — the jazz of Thelonious Monk is likened to “imprisoned birdsongs.” Leave it to a superb novelist to distill the indescribable, but many others have felt likewise.
One of his few pianistic peers, Bill Evans, found Monk’s spare, angular playing “unique and astoundingly pure.” Leading jazz critic Whitney Balliett wrote in 1959 that Monk’s music “represents possibly the most intense and single-minded exploration of the possibilities of jazz yet made by one man.”
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