With his trademark goatee; dark glasses; and hat; Thelonious Monk is an image of coolness. Jazz fans revere Monk for his groundbreaking compositions and piano playing from the 1950s and 1960s; but to a wider audience he stands for something much bigger: the idea of native genius; a quirky; absent-minded; unalloyed originality that is the perfect symbol of the undefinable essence of jazz. The man behind the mystique is now more interesting and edifying; thanks to extraordinary; unprecedented access to Monks closest friends and family; his private papers; and hours of audiotapes of Monk himself. Monks musical and cultural education blended together the key strands of African-American music traditions: from church hymns; to ecstatic stomping and call-and-response; to the blues. When he put it together with the Kansas City and New York dancehall music of swing; he reached a cultural apex unlike anyone before or after him. A husband and father; Monk moved in with an aristocratic Dutch hipster known as the Jazz Baroness; a key; strange patron of modern jazz. He continued to compose subtle; deceptively simple-sounding classics; while descending into depression and erratic behaviour. A once-energetic; joking; handsome young man grew into a tortured artist; and the Monk mystique took hold. Now Kelly reveals that this talented musician was in fact a much more complex and interesting figure than his image would suggest. A fascinating biography; not just for Monk and jazz fans; but for those interested in the fragile spirit of human nature.
#2228064 in eBooks 1998-07-20 2015-06-25File Name: B00EUUU1HS
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Exquisite Writing and PhotographyBy Story Circle Book ReviewsOn a cool fall day on Canadas west coast; hearing the honking of Canada geese; I read of Beth Pownings "dream of the wild" on Canadas east coast. She also dreamed of the garden as she and her husband Peter Powning "imagined a life" and set out for New Brunswick; Canada from New England in the United States in 1972. They still live in New Brunswick on the farm they brought in the spring of 1970. In her introduction to this new edition; Powning recalls handwriting the words that begin her book: "The coyotes are newcomers."You would think a writer improves with practice (and we do) but here is Beth Powning almost twenty years ago writing with lyricism; honesty and originality. Having read Pownings other books; I can see the beginnings of them here. At night; lying in bed; she feels as if shes "in the cabin of a ship; the hills and fields rise around me like dark seas and I feel secure . . . " Those thoughts could have been her first gleanings about The Sea Captains Wife; a novel published in 2010.In a review of Edge Seasons; Pownings memoir published in 2005; poet and memoirist Patrick Lane said: "There are few writers who can evoke the wild world with such intensity and originality." The same can be said of this book written before Edge Seasons (and another memoir called Shadow Child: An Apprenticeship in Love and Loss). She refers to those edges or "space between" in Home. "All day long; I felt a peculiar passivity; in the space between the end of one era; and the start of another." And when Powning plants a vegetable garden she finds "a stage between vision and truth; when I suddenly doubt my faith."Pownings full-color photographs accompany the prose and our walk with the author. It was Pownings camera ("microscope; wand; sacred text") that helped her to look at her world "in reverence and wonder." It was photography that brought her back to writing after her literary agents letters "became boozily incoherent." The photographs are exquisite close-ups of the details of plants and meditative images of the landscape and the sky. Nature was no longer separate. Powning had found her subject in the grass and the springs birdsong and found she was where she belonged."It takes a long time for roots to grow;" Beth Powning says. It took twenty years for her to realize "this place" as home. It became so through the small events of the natural world" that offered comfort "with a kind of transcendent familiarity; an ancient re-awakening."If theres a difference between prose and poetry; I couldnt find it here. Powning felt exposed under "so much sky" and dreamed of what could be planted on the farm. "I needed to frame the sky before I could love its serenity."Beth Powning decided she would be an author when she was eight years old. How fortunate we are that she did. As for "home;" you have to "weave it; thread by thread."by Mary Ann Moorefor Story Circle Book Reviewsreviewing books by; for; and about women