Mastering Bebop: Thelonious Monk's Live Jazz Performances

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These outstanding live jazz performances are brought by the master of bebop and piano music Thelonious Monk. Monk opens with “Lulu’s Back in Town” in both performances and showcase some of the most popular of his songs; Blue Monk, ‘Round Midnight, Don’t Blame Me, and Epistrophy. Everybody gets a chance to shine on these songs. Every musician is allotted time specifically to perform multiple solo acts, often improvising on the initial theme of the song. Dissonance plays a major role in the performance, especially from Monk on the piano; enough dissonance to make all of the classical composer roll in their graves by a wide margin.
As a performer, Monk definitely kept things more interesting by getting up and moving around, rather than just sitting …show more content…

I think as we move further into popular music, more of this incredible improvisation is going to emerge in music. Unfortunately, it is more common to see the act of coming up with melodies on the spot in person or at an actual concert, rather than on the radio or on an album. Although the performance was amazing, this particular style of music certainly fits a particular niche of both the performers and listeners. In a way, I think that listening to jazz like this takes some getting used to, especially if the listener is not used to listening to jazz in the first place. Jazz can be a very rewarding experience, but it also offers itself as something totally different from nearly all other music. Just getting used to listening to music in different scales, using minor chords, and hitting all sorts of dissonance offers plenty to work with, but Thelonious Monk’s style of playing has been just so different that it takes some practice and work to fully understand or appreciate what is going on in the music. Overall, I think this is just one of Monks many important contributions to the music of today, and a very great performance and

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