On August 1, 1965, legendary jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk played the Berkshire Music Barn and brought all his idiosyncrasies with him.

Thelonious Monk Appears At Music Barn

By R.C. Hammerich for The Morning Union.

LENOX – Perhaps Thelonious Monk had an off-night Sunday in the Music Barn. Perhaps his position in the contemporary jazz world as a leading pianistic inventor has been overrated.

First Half of Concert

At any rate, here’s an idea of what happened during the first half of his Sunday night concert in Lenox.

Twenty minutes after the concert was scheduled to start the audience showed its impatience with rhythmic clapping. Monk appeared a moment later at one side stage, strolled across the back, puffed on a cigaret, and disappeared. He was wearing a black satin skull cap which had a small, scarlet button on its crown.

He reappeared a moment later with a drummer, a bass player and a tenor saxophone player, sat at the piano and ran off a few stray notes, chords and runs, walked off the stage, immediately reappeared and started playing again.

Others Join In

The others joined him. After a long accompanied solo, the saxophonist walked off. After Monk finished a long solo, he sat impassively, head bowed. The bass player and drummer played a long duet. Then the drummer played a long solo.

The piece lasted 20 minutes and before the applause died Monk was playing again. The second piece followed the same sequence except that the turns were shorter, the bass player played a second solo after the drummer and the total time was 12 minutes.

The third piece (six minutes) also started before the applause died and so did the fourth (nine minutes) and the fifth (about five minutes).

Bows From Waist

At the end of the fifth piece, Monk, who up to then hadn’t perceptively moved his head, stood, bowed once from the waist, and walked off without changing expression. It was intermission.

From start to finish, the music had not changed its character except in two respects – the tempos ranged from medium fast to medium slow. And sometimes the saxophone and/or piano were not playing.

The music was, we regret to say, undistinguished except for a few momentary flashes of inspiration from the pianist and the drummer.

Monk’s piano sounded as if it were being played only by his right hand, a tired right hand that relied on many varying repetitions of simple, odd phrases rather than the invention of new ones and whose fingers fumbled with astonishing frequency.

Generally the rhythms were regular, the harmonies orthodox, the dynamics almost absolutely level and the tonal colors limited.

Only Monk’s little passages of eccentric, oblique, ornate, wry, tart lyricism were worthy of real attention and there were all too few of them.