Wynton Marsalis on Thelonious Monk

"Monk is an interesting study in contradictions because his behavior was eccentric — wearing strange hats, dancing 'round and 'round while others soloed, employing long periods of silence — but his music is not eccentric at all. It's very logical, mathematical, and coherent. His improvisations show more attention to consistent thematic development than any other jazz musician's. He gets an idea and then plays it up and down and forward and backward. He liked to say that musicians were mathematicians. Monk had the sound of the church in his playing, and he had the spiritual inevitability that comes only to somebody who knows the depth of the human soul. It made him at once wise and childlike, a rare combination in a full-grown man. … He played in a swing-era, 1930s shuffle time, but he was also the chief architect and high priest of 1940s bebop, a style that is still recognized as the dividing line between modern and premodern jazz. He came up with his own way of addressing the fundamentals of the music … and his own way of playing the blues. … Recommended Listening: Solo Monk, The Complete Riverside Recordings, Live at the It Club" (Moving to Higher Ground, pp. 143-145).