August 28, 2002

  • Requiem for a Critic








    Sample clips of Thelonious Monk compositions:


    Four in One,


    Criss-Cross


     


    A 1999 Mike Melillo Trio album, “Bopcentric,” includes the above compositions.




    “Melillo is a striking pianist, a chameleon who has a Bud Powell touch on a Charlie Parker be bop number, who evokes appropriate echoes of Thelonious Monk”.
    – John S. Wilson in The New York Times


    From sleeve notes by Orrin Keepnews at


    The Thelonious Monk Website:



    For many years regarded as an awesome genius, but one whose ideas were too far-out for general consumption, Monk now seems finally to be gaining long-deserved acceptance….  some critics feel that he is becoming (as John S. Wilson has put it) “increasingly lucid.”


    From The New York Times of August 28, 2002:



    John S. Wilson, the first critic to write regularly about jazz and popular music in The New York Times, died yesterday at a nursing home in Princeton, N.J. He was 89 and lived in Princeton.

Post a Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *