Get ready for a rabble-rousing, entertaining personal history of jazz. Drummer TS Monk, the son of the great Thelonious Monk, sits down with DownBeat magazine's Frank Alkyer to discuss his music, his father and the 25th anniversary of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. Monk leads one of the hardest driving jazz bands around as well as serving as an active lobbyist for jazz education as the chairman of the board of trustees at the Monk Institute.
Frank Alkyer, TS Monk
- Biographical Information
Frank Alkyer is the publisher of DownBeat magazine, the 75-year-old granddaddy of American music magazines. In his career at DownBeat he has interviewed hundreds of artists — from Quincy Jones to Wynton Marsalis to great musicians who fly just under the general public's radar.
Drummer Thelonious S. Monk, Jr. is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Thelonious Monk Institute and the son ofpianist and composer Thelonious Monk. Monk played in his father's band in the 1970s and with the fusion band Natural Essence. In the 1980s, he formed T.S. Monk, an R&B group that included his sister Barbara. In 1986, he helped to found the Institute in the hopes that he could recreate the ind of learning environment that existed in his childhood home. Monk has since gone on to record numerous successful straight-ahead jazz albums.