'Monk' to be at U of L Sunday

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Actor will bring jazz great to life

'Monk' to be at U of L Sunday

By Andrew Adler

aadler@courier-journal.com

The Courier-Journal

When actor Rome Neal brings Laurence Holder's one-man show "Monk" to the University of Louisville School of Music Sunday night, his performance will focus on one of jazz's most celebrated -- and some would say oddly behaved -- pianists and composers.

Thelonious Sphere Monk, who died in 1982 at age 64, had a career marked by such touchstone creations as " 'Round Midnight" and "Straight, No Chaser." Jazz greats from Coleman Hawkins to John Coltrane worked with him. Yet while specialists have long admired Monk, more general audiences have sometimes wondered what to make of him.

"Monk was such an interesting personality," School of Music professor Jerry Tolson said. "He went through a period where people ignored him and his music, and then had a resurgence."

Tolson met Neal, who has performed "Monk" off-Broadway in New York, last year during a jazz convention. "He's been taking this show to college campuses across the country," Tolson said. Sunday night's performance at U of L is part of the African-American Heritage Institute going on this week at the School of Music.

A persistent issue with Monk was whether his onstage behavior worked for or against his music. "In his live performances he would often dance on stage; he'd seemingly talk to himself -- you can hear him in recordings singing his lines to himself."

So what was going on?

"A lot of people believed he was merely eccentric," Tolson said. "Other people (said) that it was him being so into the music, that was how his relating to the music came out." Monk "would lock himself away and practice for long periods of time. Whether that strikes one as being eccentric, or very into their artistic endeavor, is hard to say."

Regardless of those mannerisms, Monk's works have endured. "In the late 1950s, his music was rediscovered as a more avant-garde style of jazz was coming into practice," Tolson said. And "because people have rediscovered his music and understand the complexity that his music represents and the contribution he made, I think he stands in a much higher stature than he may have when he was alive and playing."

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Edited February 9, 2007 by alocispepraluger102