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Monk, For The Record

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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