Books about Thelonious from Amazon.com

Vibe, rhythm, beat! There have been many tributes to the great jazz composer and performer Thelonius Monk, but none so arresting and surround-sound-appealing as this small, unassuming book. If you're looking for verbose or technical explanations of Monk's music, look elsewhere. Here, you'll find nothing but pure, punchy music. Scant words jump and dance over pages that bear greater resemblance to musical staffs than still places for text to sit idly. Chris Raschka, creator of Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, uses beautiful watercolors to splash and adorn the pages' multi-boxed backgrounds in a smooth, harmonic pattern based on the tones of the chromatic scale. A groovy piano makes the occasional appearance, along with the slouchy, jivin', slumpy, jammin' image of Monk doing what he did best. Do not read this book--instead, sing it, swing it, and sway to its infectious music. (Ages 4 and up).
Price: $3.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In a world of talking animals, there is one burning question: Did humans ever exist? Thelonious Chipmunk believes he has proof that they did: a postcard showing a building made of concrete and glass. But his sister thinks the postcard's just a dumb piece of paper, and that humans are only make-believe.

Then one day a flash flood carries Thelonious away. When he comes to, he's in a strange world that looks something like his postcard, but not quite. Then he realizes that this is the city on his postcard, only crumbling and decaying. But if this means humans did exist, where did they go? Thelonious, along with some new friends, sets off to find out.

And thus, the adventure begins!.
Price: $3.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The music of Thelonious Monk is among the most requested of any jazz composer, but accurate lead sheets and sources have never been widely available - until now. This folio has 70 of the master composer/pianist's most familiar pieces, as well as a number of obscure and unrecorded tunes, in easy-to-read versions. Includes counterlines and ensemble parts for many pieces, as well as bass-lines and piano voicings where applicable. Also includes a biography, a glossary, and a definitive discography of the compositions in the book. Titles include: Ask Me Now * Bemsha Swing * Blue Monk * Blue Sphere * Boo Boo's Birthday * Bright Mississippi * Brilliant Corners * Bye-Ya * Crepuscule With Nellie * Criss Cross * 52nd Street Theme * Functional * Gallop's Gallop * Hackensack * I Mean You * In Walked Bud * Jackie-ing * Let's Cool One * Little Rootie Tootie * Misterioso * Monk's Mood * Nutty * Off Minor * Pannonica * Played Twice * Rhythm-a-ning * 'Round Midnight * Ruby, My Dear * Straight No Chaser * Thelonious * Well You Needn't * and 39 more..
Price: $14.57 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Steve Lacy: Conversations is a collection of thirty-four interviews with the innovative saxophonist and jazz composer Lacy (1934–2004), a pioneer in making the soprano saxophone a contemporary jazz instrument, was a prolific performer and composer, with hundreds of recordings to his name.

This volume brings together interviews that appeared in a variety of magazines between 1959 and 2004. Conducted by writers, critics, musicians, visual artists, a philosopher, and an architect, the interviews indicate the evolution of Lacy’s extraordinary career and thought. Lacy began playing the soprano saxophone at sixteen, and was soon performing with Dixieland musicians much older than he. By nineteen he was playing with the pianist Cecil Taylor, who ignited his interest in the avant-garde. He eventually became the foremost proponent of Thelonious Monk’s music. Lacy played with a broad range of musicians, including Monk and Gil Evans, and led his own bands. A voracious reader and the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, Lacy was particularly known for setting to music literary texts—such as the Tao Te Ching, and the work of poets including Samuel Beckett, Robert Creeley, and Taslima Nasrin—as well as for collaborating with painters and dancers in multimedia projects.

Lacy lived in Paris from 1970 until 2002, and his music and ideas reflect a decades-long cross-pollination of cultures. Half of the interviews in this collection originally appeared in French sources and were translated specifically for this book. Jason Weiss provides a general introduction, as well as short introductions to each of the interviews and to the selection of Lacy’s own brief writings that appears at the end of the book. The volume also includes three song scores, a selected discography of Lacy’s recordings, and many photos from the personal collection of his wife and longtime collaborator, Irene Aebi.

Interviews by: Derek Bailey, Franck Bergerot, Yves Bouliane, Etienne Brunet, Philippe Carles, Brian Case, Garth W. Caylor Jr., John Corbett, Christoph Cox, Alex Dutilh, Lee Friedlander, Maria Friedlander, Isabelle Galloni d'Istria, Christian Gauffre, Raymond Gervais, Paul Gros-Claude, Alain-René Hardy, Ed Hazell, Alain Kirili, Mel Martin, Franck Médioni, Xavier Prévost, Philippe Quinsac, Ben Ratliff, Gérard Rouy, Kirk Silsbee, Roberto Terlizzi, Jason Weiss.
Price: $14.91 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Volume 1 features note-for-note transcriptions of Monk's renditions of 11 jazz classics: April in Paris * Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea * Dinah * Don't Blame Me * Everything Happens to Me * I Should Care * I Surrender, Dear * Just a Gigolo * Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away) * Nice Work If You Can Get It * Sweet and Lovely. Includes a biography and a discography..
Price: $13.56 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The composer, pianist, and headgear eccentric Thelonious Monk is one of the few musicians whose touch can be recognized from almost any three-second sample of his work. Who else could have dreamed up the majestic oddity of "Round Midnight" or "Well, You Needn't" or "Ruby, My Dear" or "Pannonica"? Who else could have duplicated Monk's distinctive attack at the keyboard, with its clenched harmonies and rock-skipping runs? At least one major biography has been in the works for the last 20 years, but now Leslie Gourse--who has also written books about Sarah Vaughan and Nat King Cole--has put together a graceful, intelligent narrative. Straight, No Chaser is notably light on musicological analysis, and the author never quite delivers on her promised revelations about Monk's final decade (during which he withdrew into both musical and verbal silence). But Gourse has done some excellent spadework, interviewing Monk's family, musical associates, and longtime manager Harry Colomby; her preliminary portrait is a fine one. .
Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Explore the genius of Monk through 15 note-for-note transcriptions of his takes on these standards: Bemsha Swing * Blue Monk * Boo Boo's Birthday * Criss Cross * Epistrophy * I Mean You * In Walked Bud * Let's Cool One * Monk's Dream * Nutty * Off Minor * Rhythm-a-ning * Ruby, My Dear * Straight No Chaser * Well You Needn't (It's Over Now). Also includes a bio and discography showing which recordings were used for these transcriptions..
Price: $13.78 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Explore the songs of one of the greatest jazz composers with this collection of 11 solo guitar arrangements in standard notation and tab. Songs: Blue Monk, Little Rootie Tootie, Monk's Dream, Nutty and more..
Price: $9.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) was one of jazz's greatest and most enigmatic figures. As a composer, pianist, and bandleader, Monk both extended the piano tradition known as Harlem stride and was at the center of modern jazz's creation during the 1940s, setting the stage for the experimentalism of the 1960s and '70s. This pathbreaking study combines cultural theory, biography, and musical analysis to shed new light on Monk's music and on the jazz canon itself. Gabriel Solis shows how the work of this stubbornly nonconformist composer emerged from the jazz world's fringes to find a central place in its canon. Solis reaches well beyond the usual life-and-times biography to address larger issues in jazz scholarship--ethnography and the role of memory in history's construction. He considers how Monk's stature has grown, from the narrowly focused wing of the avant-garde in the 1960s and '70s to the present, where he is claimed as an influence by musicians of all kinds. He looks at the ways musical lineages are created in the jazz world and, in the process, addresses the question of how musicians use performance itself to maintain, interpret, and debate the history of the musical tradition we call jazz..
Price: $11.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]