Thelonious Monk Piano Solos

[Sabina Kehler]

CoveringDuke Ellington poses a different sort of risk: He composed much of his music with specific band members in mind; other big bands fall short when tackling Ellington's scores, in part because their musicians, while they might be very good, aren't Johnny Hodges or Paul Gonsalves or Cootie Williams.

A few intrepid souls have leapt into the ring with Monk and held their own. In the mid-1990s, Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez put out an album called Panamonk, which, by highlighting (though not overdoing) the suggestive Latin lilt in Monk's music, made us hear Monk in a new, intriguing way. Around the same time, Fred Hersch recorded an all-Monk solo-piano album, called Thelonious, in which he managed to put his own stamp on the music while imbibing a full dose of Monk's spirit. " 'Round Midnight," as Monk first played it in the 1940s, was a haunting, eerie tune.

During his chat with Overton, Monk paces the wood floor; you can hear his footsteps. At one point, he breaks into a brief tap dance. Moran took this bit of sound and repeated it over and over on a tape loop. Then, at the concert, he played "Little Rootie Tootie" on the piano to the rhythm of Monk's dancing. Suddenly it became clear that Monk had been dancing to the song's rhythm. These songs, it seems, were constantly in Monk's head, growing out of the other tangled ideas churning in there. (Monk was deeply eccentric, possibly bipolar, but also a mathematical genius; everything he wrote and played had precise patterns, albeit unconventional ones, like some secret language that only he comprehended.)

At another point in the concert, Moran and his band played "Thelonious" at a very slow and melancholic tempo, while the screen displayed video footage of the fields and forests in Newton Grove, N.C., where Monk's great-grandfather toiled as a slave. The juxtaposition may sound corny on paper, but at Town Hall it was a heart-clutcher. As Moran told me a few days earlier in an interview, "We think of Monk as a contemporary musician, but this history is part of who he is, and what he plays, too."

Toward the end of the evening, Moran played Monk's sweet ballad to his wife, "Crepuscule With Nellie."* He alternated the opening bars with a reverie of his own composition. When the rest of the band came in, the two themes weaved in and out of each other; Moran launched into an improvisation; the horn players devised their own variations on top of that. Meanwhile, the screen displayed some of W. Eugene Smith's photos of Monk in his loft, mixed in with video footage taken recently inside the loft, which is now empty, the camera roaming across the bare wood boards. The sights and sounds swirled together like a kaleidoscope; it had the effect of a dream, a furtive glimpse of a life voyage.

A noted pianist, composer and leading figure in the Northwest jazz scene, Marc Seales has shared stages with many of the great players of the last two decades. He has played with nearly every visiting jazz celebrity from Joe Henderson and Art Pepper to Benny Carter, Mark Murphy, and Bobby Hutcherson. With the late Don Lanphere he performed in such places as London, England; Kobe, Japan; The Hague in the Netherlands; and the North Sea Jazz Festival.

The musicians he admires most are Herbie Hancock, Charlie Parker, John Lewis, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Wynton Kelly, though he is quick to acknowledge that he owes the basically be-bop/post be-bop sound of his playing to his mentors, Don Lanphere and Floyd Standifer.

Critics have praised Seales variously for his "meaty piano solos," and "blues inflected, Hancock-inspired modernism." Winner of numerous Earshot awards (Instrumentalist of the Year in 1999 and Acoustic Jazz Group in 2000 and 2001; Jazz Hall of Fame, 2009), Seales is today promoting jazz awareness and molding young talents as a Professor of Music at the University of Washington, where he is a professor in the Jazz Studies Program. He teaches an array of courses, including History of Jazz, Jazz Piano, and Beginning and Advanced Improvisation, as well as leading various workshops and ensembles.

The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.

Although there were afternoon rain showers on Saturday, patrons took cover under the Quad Stage tent for a scintillating set from Jazz 100, an all-star aggregation led by pianist and musical director Danilo Prez and featuring an imposing frontline of saxophonist Chris Potter, trumpeter Avishai Cohen and trombonist Josh Roseman, with Ben Street on bass, Roman Diaz on percussion and vocals and Adam Cruz on drums.

Medeski contributed subversive tones and other sonic tweakage on his distortion-laced Wurlitzer electric piano, and he swung in Jimmy Smith fashion on the Hammond B-3 organ. Grenadier was the fundamental anchor of the group while Scofield delivered the tunes with his uncanny vocal phrasing and wailed with Bird-like dexterity, unleashing a flood of ideas on his extended solos.

The Newport Jazz Festival was founded in 1954 by George Wein, 91, who was seen darting around the festival grounds this year in a golf cart dubbed The Lean Green Wein Machine. Total attendance for the three days was 25,500, many of whom are already looking forward to next year. DB

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