Thelonious Monk (October 10 1917 – February 17, 1982) was a jazz pianist and composer.
[edit] Sourced
- Interviewer: "What other interests do you have?"
Monk: "Life in general."
Interviewer: "What do you do about it?"
Monk: "Keep breathing."
...
Interviewer: "What do you think the purpose of life is?"
Monk: "To die."
- Down Beat magazine, October 28, 1971 [1]
- "All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians."
- Down Beat magazine, October 28, 1971 [2]
- Monk enters the studio and starts playing, the rest of the musicians join him. After few minutes of play the technician from his room shouts and stops the band.
Monk: "Why did we stop?"
Technician: "I thought you were rehearsing."
Monk: "Aren't we always?"
- Source: Thelonious Monk Documentary DVD.
[edit] Unsourced
- "I made the wrong mistakes"
- (After a disappointing improvisation)
- You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
- “Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy”
- "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." (Source: www.reflectionfortheday.com)
- "Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture" - variously attributed
- "Butterflies faster than birds? Must be, 'cause with all the birds on the scene up in my neighborhood, there's this butterfly, and he flies any way he wanna." (Source: Time Magazine)
[edit] John Coltrane
- "Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way--through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn't know about at all."
- "Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft"
- John Coltrane, Downbeat (1960). [3]
