Word: monke
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...cover subject, neither quite knew what to make of the other. Painter Boris Chaliapin, son of the late, famed Russian basso, is somewhat more at home in the hot world of opera than in the cool domains of latter-day bop. In answer to requests, Jazz Pianist Thelonious Monk would mutter, "All reet," greatly confusing Chaliapin. When he finally caught on, Chaliapin replied in Russian-accented retaliation: "All root." During four sittings Thelonious had a disconcerting habit of dropping off to sleep. Chaliapin would yell at him, "Monk, Monk, wake up!", then prod him out of his armchair and walk...
...Blessed Monk. Esthete Makarios comes of earthy origins. He was born Michael Mouskos in 1913 in the coastal village of Panayia. His father, a typical gnarled and baggy-trousered peasant, recalls that he was a "bad goatherd," and thought him rather stupid. Not so the abbot of Kykko monastery, who was attracted by young Michael's intelligence when the boy became a novice at the age of 13; he later took the name Makarios, which means "blessed." By entering Kykko, which was founded eight centuries ago high in the Troodos Mountains, and is today the wealthiest monastery in Cyprus...
...bear. "Man, we got to have those!" he told his sidemen, and for fear that the hat stores would be closed before they could get to downtown Helsinki, they fled from the welcome-to-Finland ceremonies as fast as decency permitted. And sure enough, when Thelonious Monk shambled out on the stage of the Kulttuuritalo that night to the spirited applause of 2,500 young Finns, there on his head was a splendid creation in fake lamb's-wool...
...every turn of his long life in jazz, Monk's hats have described him almost as well as the name his parents had the crystal vision to invent for him 43 years ago ? Thelonious Sphere Monk. It sounds like an alchemist's formula or a yoga ritual, but during the many years when its owner merely strayed through life (absurd beneath a baseball cap), it was the perfect name for the legends dreamed up to account for his sad silence. "Thelonious Monk? He's a recluse, man." In the mid-'40s, when Monk's reputation at last took hold...
High Philosophy. Now Monk has arrived at the summit of serious recognition he deserved all along, and his name is spoken with the quiet reverence that jazz itself has come to demand. His music is discussed in composition courses at Juilliard, sophisticates find in it affinities with Webern, and French Critic Andre Hodeir hails him as the first jazzman to have "a feeling for specifically modern esthetic values." The complexity jazz has lately acquired has always been present in Monk's music, and there is hardly a jazz musician playing who is not in some way indebted...