Angular, percussive, and utterly individual, Thelonious Monk was a founding architect of bebop, forging his radical harmonic language at Harlem’s Minton’s Playhouse in the 1940s alongside pioneers like
Dizzy Gillespie and
Charlie Parker. His compositions—“Round Midnight,” “Straight, No Chaser,” “Blue Monk,” “Epistrophy”—became enduring
jazz standards, marked by dissonant clusters, unexpected pauses, and a
blues core that kept even his most abstract ideas grounded. Early on he was misunderstood and even lost his New York cabaret card, limiting where he could perform; yet by the 1960s he had become an international figure, appearing on the cover of Time magazine in 1964. Onstage, with his trademark hats and sudden spins away from the keyboard mid-set, Monk embodied the same unpredictability he wrote into his music—leaving a songbook that still challenges musicians and rewards deep listeners.
