Thelonious Monk

Two Bay State men made it to the semifinals of the world's premier jazz competition before being eliminated. Glenn Zalewski , of Boylston, and Steven Feifke , of Lexington, were among the final 12 competitors in the 24th annual Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Piano Competition. ( Kris Bowers , a Los Angeles native and music student at the Juilliard School, took home the $25,000 top prize.) The semifinal round took place during a star-studded gala at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C....

Michael Rapaport clearly loves music. It's evident in every moment of his documentary, "Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest," the actor's directing debut about the influential hip-hop group. The film includes the rift that divided the Tribe as well as the tensions that linger today, but a deep admiration for the music itself shines through. So with the Grammy Awards on Sunday, where "Beats, Rhymes & Life" is nominated for best long form music video, we asked Rapaport to take over the Five Most space to pick his favorite music documentaries.

Ever since his emergence in 1999, Jason Moran has been compared to iconoclastic bebop pioneer Thelonious Monk. Now Moran is confronting Monk's legacy head on, in a multimedia concert called "In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall 1959. " The project was commissioned by several entities in 2006, and Moran unveiled it in New York in 2009. Thursday night he brought it to the New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall. From the moment the lights dimmed, the 658 people in the audience were enraptured.

In 1959, Thelonious Monk played a concert at Town Hall, a prestigious New York venue. This was a special occasion. It was the first time that the great pianist performed with an orchestra, a 10-person group led by arranger Hall Overton. Monk was already famous, of course, in the jazz world. But this concert brought him out from the underground and put his music, until then played solo or in small groups, in a whole new context. Fifty years later, in 2009, Jason Moran, one of today's most innovative jazz pianists, addressed the Town Hall concert with his own...

JAZZ The ratio of Thelonious Monk tribute albums to Thelonious Monk compositions is way out of synch. The iconoclastic pianist wrote only 70 tunes, but you know most of them, even if you don't know you know them. Monk tributes are numerous, but trumpeter Jimmy Owens's "The Monk Project" warrants special attention. One reason is the lineup: Aside from Owens (who gigged with Hampton, Mingus, Basie, and others), the septet features Wycliffe Gordon (trombone), Marcus Strickland (tenor saxophone)

Twenty-seven years after his death, Thelonious Sphere Monk remains jazz’s most enigmatic figure. The pianist presided over the birth of bebop at a small New York club, and he composed some of the music’s most enduring themes, including one - “Round Midnight’’ - that has become jazz’s de facto anthem. His own playing, however, was a constant source of controversy; from the start, critics were divided over whether he was a genius who introduced new ideas to jazz performance or a fraud who simply couldn’t play very well.

Betwixt Hat Hut ESSENTIAL "Saturn" "Betwixt" is the third release from the Boston-based jazz trio known as mi3, though curiously that moniker does not appear anywhere on the new album. The captain of the ship is Pandelis Karayorgis, who returns to the Fender Rhodes electric piano for this outing with bassist Nate McBride and drummer Curt Newton. Karayorgis's utilization of the Fender Rhodes reminds me of the way Larry Young played the organ. No tired clichés are employed.

Jackie Paris, a jazz vocalist who toured with Charlie Parker and was said to be one of the favorite singers of Ella Fitzgerald and comedian Lenny Bruce, died Thursday in Manhattan of complications from bone cancer. He was 79. Born Carlo Jackie Paris in Nutley, N.J., he got his start as a child in vaudeville and worked as a singer and guitarist in the jazz clubs of 52d Street in the 1940s. He served two years in the Army. Mr. Paris worked with Lionel Hampton and Charles Mingus and was the first to sing the lyrics to Thelonious Monk's " 'Round Midnight.

NEW YORK - Art D’Lugoff, whose famed New York City nightclub, the Village Gate, featured performers from jazz great Duke Ellington to 1960s counterculture rocker Jimi Hendrix, has died at age 85, his brother Burt said. Mr. D’Lugoff, who lived in the Bronx, died Wednesday at a Manhattan hospital. Mr. D’Lugoff hired blacklisted singers Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger and fired Dustin Hoffman as a waiter. Hoffman, then a struggling actor, later said he was so distracted by the performers that he neglected customers.

Pannonica de Koenigswarter is a jazz legend, but not for any virtuosity on an instrument. She is famous for having befriended scores of musicians as a high-powered patron of jazz. She had an especially close association with both Thelonious Monk and his wife. Charlie Parker died in her apartment. Now we have a new window onto de Koenigswarter's life. What we didn't know: She had undertaken a little project in which she asked every musician she knew to write down their three wishes.

JAZZ The ratio of Thelonious Monk tribute albums to Thelonious Monk compositions is way out of synch. The iconoclastic pianist wrote only 70 tunes, but you know most of them, even if you don't know you know them. Monk tributes are numerous, but trumpeter Jimmy Owens's "The Monk Project" warrants special attention. One reason is the lineup: Aside from Owens (who gigged with Hampton, Mingus, Basie, and others), the septet features Wycliffe Gordon (trombone), Marcus Strickland (tenor saxophone)

Much of the livelihood of jazz is built upon covers. Jazz artists have offered up their own version of popular songs - "Body and Soul," "Summertime," "My Favorite Things" - since the genre's advent. Today's jazz musicians are just as likely to cover rock and pop songs by the likes of Radiohead, Björk, or Wilco as they are to tackle the oeuvre of Cole Porter or Johnny Mercer. Releasing an entire album devoted to one songwriter is nothing new, either. Ella Fitzgerald famously did her "songbook" series.

MARBLEHEAD - Showtime has arrived, and the stooped emcee rises slowly from a chair, leaning into a cane as he takes one halting step, and then another, in a small room dominated by a double row of wheelchairs. "Ladies and gentlemen," Lennie Sogoloff rasps in a gravelly voice. "I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you here. Today, we have two old friends of mine. " Forty years ago, Sogoloff, now 87, was the force behind Lennie's-on-the-Turnpike, the legendary West Peabody jazz club where he introduced the likes of Duke Ellington and Buddy Rich to energized crowds of...

Two Bay State men made it to the semifinals of the world's premier jazz competition before being eliminated. Glenn Zalewski , of Boylston, and Steven Feifke , of Lexington, were among the final 12 competitors in the 24th annual Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Piano Competition. ( Kris Bowers , a Los Angeles native and music student at the Juilliard School, took home the $25,000 top prize.) The semifinal round took place during a star-studded gala at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural...

Visually, jazz had great timing. It arrived on the scene more or less concurrently with hand-held single-lens reflex cameras and high-speed film. This meant a music based on improvisation could be documented by a medium increasingly defined by it. The where and who of jazz were almost as good for photographers as its when. Jazz clubs are high-contrast heaven: spotlighted performers in front of darkened listeners. Until recently, they also offered atmospheric filigree, courtesy of cigarette smoke — bad for the lungs, a boon for the lens.

Michael Rapaport clearly loves music. It's evident in every moment of his documentary, "Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest," the actor's directing debut about the influential hip-hop group. The film includes the rift that divided the Tribe as well as the tensions that linger today, but a deep admiration for the music itself shines through. So with the Grammy Awards on Sunday, where "Beats, Rhymes & Life" is nominated for best long form music video, we asked Rapaport to take over the Five Most space to pick his favorite music documentaries.

CAMBRIDGE - If anyone can make the accordion hip - and that's a tall order - it just might be Cory Pesaturo. Pesaturo, a 21-year-old senior at New England Conservatory, is the most impressive jazz accordionist these ears have ever heard. Perhaps that's because many jazz musicians who play accordion use it as a gimmick or to give their jazz Mediterranean accents. Pesaturo makes the instrument sound as natural and native to jazz as the saxophone or trumpet. Tuesday night he had his debut at Ryles, backed by the local jazz institution known as the Fringe...