The piano has been around for some time — about as long as lions have been extinct in Libya. Invented somewhere around 1700 (earlier versions expected), the instrument has long been the centerpiece of musical innovation and remains a most incredible landscape for composing, performing and improvising.

Among the difficult debates, race and music is of especial import as it concerns the piano. The classical music we love often exists in a time-shielded bubble, with little connection between the music and what was happening at the time of its inception — after all, it’s classic. Fact is, modern classical music (Stravinsky, Ravel, Rachmaninoff) was pushing limits at the same time that jazz was blossoming in America.

It could well be that many talented musicians never became involved in the classical world as a matter of course, and instead invented a new American tradition. Here I present to you the maestro of American music, the Chopin of Jazz, the Melodious Thunk: Thelonious Monk.

While somewhat clownish, the songs presented in his 1959 solo San Francisco show are some of the most deeply sorrowful I’ve heard. His style sounds as though he’s just tossing his sausages over the keys, but the accuracy of the clusters and the reason-ability of the melodies speak to the hallowed halls of masters, not a North Carolinian highschool dropout.

Round Lights

( album )

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